


Of Angels and Demons

by Dragonemerald, SVER_Fate



Category: Devil May Cry, Diablo (Video Game), 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angels, BAMF Midoriya Izuku, BAMF Shiozaki Ibara, BAMF Uraraka Ochako, Big Brother Dante (DMC), Big Brother Vergil (DMC), Demons, Endeavor is kinda Cringe, Everyone has an agenda, F/M, Fallen Angels, Good Parent Todoroki Enji | Endeavor, Magic, Morally grey Izuku, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Protective Todoroki Enji | Endeavor, Sentient Devil Arms (Devil May Cry), Stain is not who you think he is, U.A. is a University (My Hero Academia), Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-22
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:41:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 30,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28250064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dragonemerald/pseuds/Dragonemerald, https://archiveofourown.org/users/SVER_Fate/pseuds/SVER_Fate
Summary: Izuku Midoriya walks powerless in a world of Slayers, Witches and many other legends...Isolated, but determined to join the ranks of heroes and dreaming to be a slayer of demons. he falls into peril while fighting against his once-friend.He makes a desperate plea, and in answer the world changes.
Relationships: Midoriya Izuku/Shiozaki Ibara, Midoriya Izuku/Toga Himiko, Midoriya Izuku/Uraraka Ochako, Midoriya Izuku/Yaoyorozu Momo
Comments: 74
Kudos: 108





	1. A Desperate Plea

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone welcome to the first chapter of “Of Angels and Demons”!!! This is a story me and my co-writer DragonEmerald aka Pixel have had in the works for awhile now. Without further ado I hope everyone enjoys!!! See you all next time.

_ The water under him reflected the blue skies above, no clouds, no diversions. The color blue was everywhere around him. On the eerily still water stretching as far as he could see, on the sky, similarly as large. Izuku mentally sighed and prepared himself. He knew what would happen next, and he swore he would get it right this time.  _

_ "Izu… ku." The wind whispered his name and he whirled around to stare at the figure across from him. It was a human, male as far as he could tell. The figure was cloaked in shadows, just a black, human-shaped spot in this otherwise infinitely blue world.  _

_ "My… Nee… are …" the figure went on to say, and however much Izuku strained himself, he could only hear bits and pieces. It was like something was actively cutting between what was being said. _

_ "Do… will… help… no…." The figure kept speaking, even when Izuku violently shook his head, attempting to communicate via body language, though the figure didn't seem to see him. _

_ He softly cursed in frustration and… _

He woke up. He took a deep breath and started sharply cursing. He was close; he had gathered that much. He was so close to achieving SOMETHING, even though he didn't know whether it was discovering the man's identity, or talking with him. It irked him a lot since he had had these sorts of dreams every month and, without fail, almost on the same day. 

He got ready for his day, brushing his teeth, getting a shower, getting into his school robes. The usual. 

"Izuku! Are you up!" shouted his mother, and a smile bloomed on Izuku's face. 

"Yes mom!" he called, although a bit calmer than her. He grabbed his backpack and his phone before making his way downstairs. 

Downstairs, he saw Inko Midoria, his mother, who was bustling about in the kitchen with her usual frantic energy. Izuku loved his mother, but he had no idea how the woman had that much energy. She had told him that he was similar to her before his fifth birthday, but he didn't remember much of that. 

He opened his phone to browse through the news as he exchanged greetings with his mother, almost getting blinded by her smile in the process. She was so full of life that her smiles sometimes had a shine to them. Her tears were just as famous, actually. He wondered if it was a secondary quirk thing.

The news gave him nothing interesting, except for the expected Tear locations through the day, and the Slayers assigned to them. He worried, as he usually did, at the dropping amounts of "quests" All Might was taking before switching over to yesterday's school material. They were going to be quizzed about it today, so he didn't want to be unprepared.

The Slayers and Heroes were different jobs that focused on combat. Heroes usually fought Villains and Slayers fought the demons that came out of Tears.

Humans could predict these tears with a decent amount of accuracy by analysing how "well" a place was, which usually meant how well off a place was and how many crimes had been committed, as well as a whole host of other factors that affected the human mood. Demons were usually attracted to places with abundant negative feelings, which had made predicting where they would be easy.

Demons. Beings that were incredibly realistic and dangerous, but were thought to be made of energy that resides in Limbo, a mirror world of sorts, and make Tears to our world. Furthermore—"

"Should you really keep reading that, Izuku? You're gonna be late at this rate!" his mom exclaimed with a slightly worried expression, and he checked the internal clock on his phone. He had time. His mom was just a worrywart, but he quickly got to eating breakfast so she wouldn't be worried. 

"Have you thought about where you'll be going after high school, Izuku?" His mother asked him in a genuinely curious expression. Of course, they both knew his first answer, and Inko supported his decision of being a Hero (and maybe even a Slayer), even if she didn't do it wholeheartedly. 

She was talking about his secondary decision. Online education had made a lot of leaps and bounds in these past two hundred years, starting with the pandemic of pandemics, which had consisted of multiple diseases raging across the world almost at the same time, and had only grown further as the quirk battles raged across cities and usually halted society in more than one way. 

Which was why he was even able to take on a secondary university course.

"I don't really know mom. I've thought about a lot of things, but nothing exactly stood out." He sighed, and his mother's stare lingered a bit longer before focusing on her food. They ate in comfortable silence before Izuku stood up and exchanged farewells before he headed to his school. 

Aldera High wasn't the best of places for Izuku. It was somewhere he may as well have been invisible. This was mostly caused by his quirkless status, which had destroyed any semblance of social life he had had before it was discovered. 

Occasionally, he would think about how unfair it all was—that so many people got quirks and how it became the center of everyone's worlds—before he would shrug and get on with his day. Really, it wasn't as bad as it could've been, if one thought about it. There were quirkless Slayers who were legends on the account of them being just that good, even without a quirk. 

Hell, the first slayer, "DOOM," as he had named himself, was a quirkless mute kid who had specialized in custom-made guns and melee combat with demons before retiring fifty-some years later.

He passed through the gates, taking care to avoid the only person who paid some shred of attention to him, Bakugo Katsuki. 

To be honest, Bakugo was a bad person. He was selfish, only interested in being the strongest and having everyone bow to him for it. Being a hero and a slayer was essentially a license to be strong in his eyes, although he denied it to hell and back. Izuku didn't like Bakugo for more than one reason, and chief among them was what he had become: a bully and all around a bad time for people who had no choice but to put up with him (after all, you can't exactly afford to repair a place that keeps being blown up constantly). This wasn't helped by the fact some of the kids had decided to join in with him, essentially creating a breeding ground for much, much worse things than simple bullying. 

Izuku shook his head. Now wasn't the time to focus on maybe the worst person in his life. Instead, he should focus on the upcoming quiz that the teacher was droning about as he handed out the papers. 

**A Few Hours Later**

He grinned to himself and stretched in his seat. Another school day done; time to catch some fights! He enthusiastically collected his things and went out to the courtyard and was headed towards the exit of the school when he heard familiar noises of explosions and crackling hands. He sighed and changed course.

"Fucking extra! Know your place, and don't you dare get your name on the damn U.A sign-up sheet!" Bakugo sneered and swore as he glared at a boy across from him. The trembling boy made to respond, but was cut off once again. 

"Shut up! Shut up! Just nod your empty head to agree, extra!" Bakugo nearly snarled and Izuku frowned, staring at the scene. Bakugo and his "friends" were staring at a black-haired boy who was huddling at a corner, terrified and petrified in his fear. 

Izuku quickly walked over, seeing himself in the black-haired boy, minimized body language, hidden face… he almost snarled himself as he walked in front of the boy, confusing some and stunning most to silence. His face showed only annoyance, although he was feeling furious. 

"Bakugo, what the  _ hell  _ are you doing?" Izuku asked. He knew what was going on. Of course he knew; he had been through the same himself until he had fought back, drawing courage from the quirkless few that had great lives. He wasn't about to let Bakugo pull that on some other kid. 

"Hah! You can't see or something? Get out of my way, Deku. I'm going to teach that extra to not get in my way!" Bakugo shouted at him, glaring with the ferocity of a thousand suns. 

Izuku was reminded of some of the demons he had seen in the fights he had chased. "Their eyes were scarier…" he mused to himself before he squared his shoulders and smiled gently at Bakugo, knowing it would annoy him more than anger. He counted the grinding of Bakugo’s teeth as a success. "In your way? Since when has U.A been yours? I'm saying this once, Bakugo: leave and mind your own business, save us the records." There. That was always enough to get him to stand down. Remind him of the records of behavior kept on each student, and Bakugo would back off.

He only seemed angrier instead. "You know what? I am so sick and tired of you showing up all the damn time and interfering with what I want to do! I am going to be the greatest hero, Deku, and you won't stand in my way! So fuck off and die!" he roared, causing Izuku's mere anger to climb into an almost murderous rage. 

They had been friends once, dammit! He respected the person that he had been! He had always found ways for Bakugo to back down without a fight, and this was what he got? He kept Bakugo from doing stupid shit and got a geniuine death wish upon him!? 

"Fine," Izuku snarled, interrupting the shocked silence, even as the light in Bakugo's eyes seemed to dim a little from what he had just said, likely disbelieving it himself. "You wanna go that badly? You want me to die that much?  _ Fine! _ Come do it yourself! Come on!" Izuku shouted out his frustration as he got into a battle stance. He was riding the high of his rage right now and decided not to think things through. Bakugo wanted a fight. So a fight he was going to get! 

Bakugo stared at his once-upon-a-time friend and felt unimaginable fury come upon him. Deku, who stood tall regardless of how useless he was, how quirkless he was. Who had friends that were genuinely happy to see him, hang out with him, talk to him. While he, Bakugo Katsuki, had lackeys and yes-men, people who just nodded their empty little heads at him and did what he wanted. He asked himself, "What does Deku have that I don't!?" many times, and well… looks like he'd find out now!

He didn't say a word as he charged towards Deku, his hand ready for a right hook. Deku ducked under and punched him right in the chest cavity, taking away his breath and then following it with a right hook of his own. 

Katsuki bit back the pain and the dizziness and he attacked with palm open and ready to thrust it into the bastard's face. Deku ignored it and sent a chop towards his throat, calling him on his bluff and forcing him to duck down, only to greet Deku's knee with his face. Putting his hands in front of him and making an explosion, he hit Deku, who cried out and staggered back. 

Katsuki then struck his palms towards Izuku and opened his mouth to threaten the quirkless shit before he quickly aborted that action as he saw Deku lunging towards him. He was too late, however, and was knocked onto the ground with Deku on top of him, raining a few blows onto his face until Katsuki hit him with a hook, knocking Deku away from him and forcing himself into a kneeling position. 

Meanwhile, the people around them watched in bated breath. Everyone had known this fight would happen from day one, since the day Izuku had told off Bakugo and got him to back off peacefully. The tension between them was thicker than steel, and it was only a surprise that it hadn't happened earlier. 

Izuku glared at his opponent. He was fine enough, only having taken the two hooks and an explosion. He figured he had given as good as he got. "So, ready to stop this, Katsuki?" he growled at his once-friend. He hadn't liked Katsuki since he turned to "proving his superiority" to others. Izuku had always protected whom he could, mainly by getting in the way and talking Katsuki down. 

Although it hadn't changed his standing from being mostly ignored, he still did it because he wanted Katsuki to be a hero. For the child he had made pacts upon pacts with to be heroes together. But now he had just taken it all and thrown it in his face. This whole time all he had done was try to keep Katsuki's nose out of trouble, and the bastard had told him to die! How fucked up was that?

"Come on, we don't need more of this…" he trailed off. His words and his face didn't match. He glared at Bakugo and conveyed his sudden frustration turned to hatred. 

Bakugo, meanwhile, was almost frothing at the mouth with rage How dare Deku? How dare he tell him all of this was his fault? To talk to him as if HE was the aggressor! It was Deku all along, it was Deku who had stopped his attempts of proving his power, of being strong. It was Deku who was better than him without trying! That bastard had no right to try to calm him down, dammit!

"Oh yeah? You speak pretty words, but I fucking know how much you're scared your perfect little life is going to fall apart after this! You're nothing! And you were nothing! You don't get to be the way you pretend to be!" he raged at Izuku, who only showed a glimmer of confusion at his words as his hands went toward his waist. 

"OI! YOU DON'T GET TO SAY THAT YOU, YELLOW PEACOCK! YOU ARE A VILLAIN DAMMIT!" some student from the crowd that had gathered to watch the fight shouted at him. Before Bakugo could turn to answer him, someone else from the crowd did.

"HOW DARE YOU CALL SOMEONE LIKE KATSUKI A VILLAIN YOU PIECE OF SHIT! HE'S WORTH A MILLION OF YOU!" 

"IS THAT A JOKE? HE'S JUST A PRETENDER!"

The dissenting noises began to get physical as Katsuki glared at Izuku, who seemed to anticipate something and stared… behind him?

A ghastly ripping noise completely stilled the crowd of fighting students. They all knew that sound and had been taught to be ready to run or fight at the sound of it. But now, now that it was real, all the hatred and anger in the air had turned to fear and the Tear opened all the faster for it. 

Demons of mostly animalistic shapes began to push out of the tear and jump on the students. A few of the braver students went to attack the animalistic demons. Bakugo went to turn around and blast away a few before he was knocked to the ground by a weird mix between an ant and a snake. Most of its limbs seemed serpentine, but shadows seemed to seep out of its scales. Staring up at the predatory eyes of the demon, he saw the glint that was oh so familiar, the animalistic, unreasonable anger. The hunger to kill, the sheer heartless fury in those eyes froze him. 

It was similar to himself, and yet so incredibly different that he could do nothing but stare in disturbed shock as the animal opened it's mandibles and made to snap his neck like it was paper before it was stabbed in the eyes and kicked away from him by the person he arguably hated the most. Izuku looked at him, eyes hardened, prepared and concerned… for him? 

"Katsuki, you need to—" a growl interrupted him as a dog with blades for fur jumped up at him to tackle him down. Izuku made to stab it in its eyes before the demon leaned out of the way and twisted itself down, shredding Izuku's arm like it was wet paper and tackling him to the ground anyway. He screamed in agony so intense it brought everyone to a halt, even the demons watched him as Deku struggled to hold back his screams and sat up before making to grab the dog that was chewing on the mutilated limb.

He wasn't given the chance to retaliate before an armadillo-like demon tackled his torso and sent him careening back. Directly into the open Tear. 

"IZUKU!" shouted Bakugo, willing his body to move, to explode, to fight. To do anything to counter what he was seeing except stay in place. 

They watched as the tear closed and the demons seemed to be… laughing? They rapidly gave off scratchy and chocked exhales of air, even as they were attacked by the students that had fought back at first, some of them screaming in righteous fury, yet Bakugo could do nothing but stare at the place that had once held the Tear. He had watched as the boy he had hated, who he had once been best friends with, the child he had made pact upon pact with to be heroes, disappear. 

Izuku. His former friend with whom he had spent many sleepless nights focusing on how they could be heroes and had made solemn promises to be heroes was just… not there anymore. True, he hated him. True, he had prevented him from being stronger. But he didn't deserve to be sucked into Limbo. Nobody did. 

" **HAVE NO FEAR! WHY? BECAUSE I AM HERE!"** Came the confident laughter from above and All Might landed among them, beginning to swat demons left and right with the same grin as he always had. Except Katsuki didn't feel reassured, he felt… angry. Why hadn't he come sooner? Why not a second before? Why not— 

His thoughts were put on hold as he was attacked. He retaliated by blasting the demon attacking him with vicious anger, decimating the thing so thoroughly that there wasn't a part left of it. He screamed his rage and attacked without mercy. They would pay! The demons would all pay! 

**In Limbo**

_ ‘Damn... so I guess this is how it ends,’  _ thought Izuku Midoriya as he plummeted through the demonic realm of Limbo. There was a tranquility in the moment. The pain of the arm that had been mutilated was barely bothering him anymore, now that he was most assuredly falling to his death. Even if he wasn't dead from the fall, he had no chance against demons, even with his dagger, which he had left in the eye of the Snake-ant he had kicked away from Katsuki.

His arm pulsed in pain, even though he knew he should've lost feeling in it by now.  _ ‘I guess this is what they call a phantom limb. I can still feel it although I know it’s in the belly of that demon. Oh well, better take a look.’ _

Izuku curled in on himself as he stared at his left arm. It was a twisted, mutilated thing; the arm from the elbow was completely missing, and the rest was just a mangled, bloody mess, with bones sticking out of it every which way. He gave a wet chuckle and kept ignoring the pain that radiated from the arm as he looked up to the void he was falling through and started to laugh. 

Whether this was from the severe blood loss from his missing arm, the ridiculous situation he was in, or both, he couldn’t tell. After his laughter died down, he closed his eyes and sighed, thinking about home and his mother, and his one or two online friends that would probably be annoyed at his disappearance, but nothing else.

It was a pathetic life, he knew. But it was his and he had loved it. No matter how ignored he was, no matter how people seemed to just not make sense in how they thought quirks were the end-all and be-all in everything. But he was making efforts to make peace with his rapidly approaching death, so he gave a shrug and sent a mental goodbye to his mother and those two friends and waited. 

And waited…

And waited… 

He tentatively opened his eyes, having estimated to be dead about three seconds ago. Just as he did, he crashed into the soft dirt below him and groaned as the pain came back, seemingly with a vengeance. His arm hurt like it was being jammed with thousands of needles at his open nerves, and the rest of his body felt like it was given a good thrashing. He thought that fair, since he did just fall out of the sky. 

He chuckled to himself as he stood up, fighting the pain as he had done for most of his life, just… not actual pain. He then took a look around. Everything seemed surreal; he was at the school, except it was upside down and had a blue sort of void surrounding it. Shattered rocks and a black crystalline substance was on the walls and occasionally floating up into the void. The walls occasionally had writings on them, but he couldn't focus on that. He focused on the courtyard instead. Deeming there to be no threats, he could only plop himself down and hold onto his arm. 

_ ‘Damn… fallen into Limbo and haven't even died from demons… how lame…’  _ he thought wryly and mentally groaned as two blade-dog like creatures jumped up from the black substance coating the ground and growled at him. 

_ ‘Lesson learned; don't fuck with the irony gods… although if I can use that lesson, that's another matter entirely.’  _ He held his right hand to his waist and swore when he remembered his dagger was in the overworld and not with him. Meaning he had basically no means to defend himself. 

The dogs slowly stalked towards him, and he backed away, keeping himself in a combat stance as much as he could. He was filled with adrenaline, and his previous statements of making peace with his death had flown right out the window. He didn't want to die like this! He wanted to live, to see his mother, to see his friends again! He wanted to be a slayer. He wanted to protect people. He wanted to be someone people looked at and smiled because it was going to be okay, now that he was there! 

He growled back at the dogs, unaware that powers greater than him were slowly paying attention to him. He stopped backing up, driven by the desire to live. To be a hero, to protect people. He would fight. He would fight to live and he would fight for the hero that he was going to be. 

He charged. The dogs mirrored his move, and they both jumped up at him, one on his torso, the other on his undamaged arm. He grinned savagely; he had learned from last time.

He ducked under one of the dogs and grabbed it's bladeless tail, swinging it against the other, striking both of them. He threw the one he had in his hands down on its bladed back and stomped on its belly, causing the demon to let out an agonized whine that made the dog he had struck with the other charge at him again, blades hackled and pointing at him this time. 

Izuku leaned away and made to grab its tail, but the dog below him took action and clamped down on his leg. He stomped on that dog's nose, biting back a scream at the same time as the dog below him whined in pain. He wouldn't die here; he would kill these things, and find a way to survive! He could do this! 

He had encouraged himself as he sent another kick to the whining dog's nose and tried to jump back, but the pain in his leg and the blood loss crashed into him at the same time and caused him to fall on his knees. The two dogs, sensing weakness, got on their legs and started stalking forward, slowly, in case he was faking. 

Izuku snarled, frustrated and scared.  _ ‘Not now, dammit! I'll die if I don't move! Move! Move!’  _ he screamed inside his head even as he held his good arm in front of him and staggered up, settling on a balance despite his dizziness. His confidence had shattered now. He had realized just how close to death he was and how, even if he won, the blood loss was going to get to him. But he wasn't willing to give up, wasn't going to concede defeat. 

_"I won't die here dammit! Help me! Help me live! H_ e _l_ p _me_ be _the_ hero I need to be!" He screamed. Whether it was in his head or he screamed out loud, he couldn't guess. The adrenaline had worn off, the pain was even greater than before, and his thoughts were blanking. He could go on no more, so he fell unconscious against the dirt and unaware of just how much he had changed with his plea.


	2. Dangerous Plays

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone! I can’t believe how popular chapter one of A&D was and you all wanted more, so here it is chapter 2!!! 
> 
> A couple important notes first off there is a comment about witches this will be expanded next chapter.
> 
> One more important note we introduce our OC Ariesvia it’s pronounced Ari-es-via in case anyone has a hard time pronouncing it.
> 
> Anyway have a great day everyone!

"...Help me! Help me live! Help me be the hero I need to be!" 

The scream echoed endlessly through Limbo, attracting the attention of many demons, but especially one in particular. That demon was engaged in combat with fellow demons who were shouting curses and insults at him as he ran through their ranks like a hot blade through butter. 

Hisashi froze upon hearing the scream and took a fireball to his chest as a consequence. He stumbled back a few steps before taking a deep breath and unleashing his own emerald colored flames, Driving away or incinerating the demons that had once been attacking him. 

He took a deep breath and eyed the environment around him cautiously, searching for any other foes, finding none, marginally relaxed himself. 

"How could this be? I had kept him away… I thought I had—no. It doesn't matter now. I have to help Izuku!" He determined a course of action and took another deep breath, exhaling thick dark smoke that coalesced as a humanoid, taking a shape similar to it's conjurer. 

The smoke eventually settled and gained coloring, coming to completely imitate it's creator from the black, fluffy hair to the outfit of black jeans, white shirt and long overcoat. The human-like demon sighed in a distinct tone of worry and nodded at it's imitation. The smoke imitation bounded out of there and into the waters above them. The demon cackled dryly as he watched the seemingly endless water above move and wave at the disturbance before turning his eyes onto the ruined grey ground at his feet and wherever else he looked. It was a dull world, grey waters above and dull grey stone below… but beauty wasn't why he had made this place.

He looked forward, his attention suddenly snatched by the hordes of demons crawling, flying, running, and walking towards him, or the floating crystal behind him, and cackled again. Preparing his sword, he bellowed out a war cry and rushed the horde. The demons across from him roared back and did the same.

  
  


**Meanwhile, up in the High Heavens...**

Dead silence spanned the room in which the Angiris Council convened. The plea had reached them in the middle of a now forgotten argument. 

"This is… unique…" surmised the Archangel of Wisdom, Maltheal. Even he appeared to be at a loss for words. 

"A plea from such a pure soul…" trailed off Auriel, her tone all too clearly declaring her intentions to help. 

"Not just to us: it has echoed to all who can hear and understand," chimed in the Archangel of Fate, Itherael. The undertone of wonder and focus in his voice was clear; he hadn't seen such a thing before and was focused on seeking answers in his scroll.

"Tch! How… unfortunate. He is in enemy territory, furthermore, on the edge of the eternal embrace..." sighed the Archangel of Valor Imperius, the current leader of the angiris council. 

"So we'd let him die? A soul of such power, such purity? There's no reason to condemn him!" rebutted Tyreal, furious with his once-friend. 

"So we save every single one of those humans from death? Do you not fear the chaos that would bring? Do you not fear retaliation?" Imperious whirled on Tyreal and the two stared at one another defiantly. 

"Hey, hey! We cannot make a decision without everyone's input. What do you think, Itherael?" Auriel turned to Ithereal, who let go of his scroll and let his eyes roam over the council and then over the lush and luxurious room, one of such magnificence that human words couldn't begin to describe it. Such was the realm of heaven… 

Itherael brought himself out of this thoughts and turned to Auriel. "He is the wind of change… Help or no help, he will not die there, but I have no further insights; I cannot see more than what he is."

Imperius grunted. "How… mysterious… How would we be of help, anyway? Our angels in the overworld are either dormant, or…" he trailed off, a note of simmering fury in his voice. 

"Or Lost," Maltheal completed the sentence, bringing temporary chills across the group. "But we have a way of helping. Even if we cannot send an angel physically—"

Imperius slammed his hand onto the table. "And abandon one of ours to the care of a dying human? In the accursed Limbo? Absolutely not!" 

Tyreal narrows his eyes, although it wasn't seen by anyone else. "You cannot claim ignorance of this Izuku Midoriya's valor and honour. You cannot say that he will not be a better choice than some we have chosen." 

Auriel sighed, the sound bringing a temporary soothing wave over the room. "Izuku Midoriya will be great, in time. And whether we help or not doesn't seem to affect his death, as Itherael told us. What is truly stopping us?"

Imperius leaned back, everyone could imagine two raised eyebrows under the shadows of his helmet. "Have you all forgotten he is currently nearing death as we speak? And among demons nonetheless! Do you not remember the Lost? Do you understand what would happen If an angel is exposed to further sin?" he exclaimed and entombed the room in thoughtful silence.

"I think…" Maltheal started to speak and captured the attention of all the council and the other angels in the High Heavens watching the debate. "...that we have to take a leap. A leap of faith, and trust this child."

Imperius visibly shook in anger, but reigned himself in. "No, I will not have it! To hand the demons one of us so willingly! Have we fallen so far as to consider that? No, I am voting against it!" His words carried the same weight as his gauntleted fist striking the table. 

Tyreal merely sighed and spoke. "I vote that we send one of ours to help him. The winds of change would be better on the side of good."

Auriel chimed in, "Seconded…" 

Itherael was silent for a long time. "I cannot know the fate of the angel that would go down. I vote that we do not interfere."

Maltheal took another look around the place before locking eyes with Imperius. "Thirded."

The sound of Imperius‘ clenched fists echoed clearly through the conference room, but not the whole realm. His deep breath brought immense anticipation and Imperius brought it all to a head by asking, "Who, among our kind, will go and aid Izuku Midoriya?" 

The question rang through the realm and a pregnant silence fell throughout it. 

"I will," said a clearly female voice. Imperius' body stilled, as if faced with death himself. 

"Arie… You—" Imperius tried to… Even he doesn't know what he tried to do, but his daughter, his one and only precious daughter, stopped him with a mere shake of her head. It would have been comical if it weren't sad. 

"No… 'Witch' can summon me. I am too powerful for that. But I cannot fight if I am stuck here. It is my wish, my duty, to fight against demons. It's what you've trained me to do!" the angel, Ariesvia, stated powerfully. "You won't stop me from fulfilling my wish and my purpose." She visibly brightened upon the sagging of Imperius' shoulder pads. 

"I suppose… there truly is nothing I can do to stop you. I only wish you had the time for further training so that you may have been…" Imperius looked hesitant. There wasn’t any angel in all of the hosts that didn’t understand Imperius's hesitation. 

"I won't be safe, father. 'One is never safe in war,' remember?" She smiled at her father in a comforting way. 

"Well then. We will have to set up the magics to send her through realms." Tyreal grimaced; they had taken enough time already…

"No need. I have the circle perfected from previous research. Put your hand upon it last," Maltheal commanded as he placed his hand on the table, his power bending it to his purpose and immediately creating a magic circle on its surface.. 

The Angiris Council followed, and Ariesvia drew a deep, fortifying breath before she touched the circle and was immediately squeezed on all sides and a blast of energy left the heavenly realm. 

  
  


Light blazed through the overworld between one second before appearing in Limbo, where it slowed immensely while blazing through the air in search of its charge: one dying Izuku Midoriya. 

The light pulsed once when some demons looked up at the sky to see the blazing light traveling across it tried to erect barriers in front of it. The light smashed through them like they were paper mache and kept on its path for three minutes before suddenly turning sharply and falling right on top of its charge, temporarily scaring away the two demons that had been curiously sniffing at Izuku’s body. 

Ariesvia materialized in a mindscape, created by Izuku's consciousness to house the consciousness of the new entity taking refuge in his body. The angel looked around and was suprised to find herself on an island, seemingly the only land among an endlessly rolling, churning sea. A storm was gathering and the winds were picking up to match it. Ariesvia wondered for a moment why this human's mind was so chaotic before she put the thought at the back of her mind and started to heal the injuries Izuku had by first stopping the blood flow—

The wind became a howling storm in an instant and the water rose over her form and crashed on the shores of the island, swallowing some of the landmass as the angel scrambled to get into the forest at the center. 

Ariesvia felt something whipping up the storm, something that was trying to make an entrance, something that was as powerful as it was vehement. 

"Oh-ho, I won't give up that easily," she growled and pulled on her own power just as her father had taught her. Wisps of pure gold burst from her back and made the outline of wingbones before trailing down in smoke form to create the rest of the wing, allowing Ariesvia to catch some of the wind and fly upwards. She concentrated on her power and released it in a soothing wave around herself, dimming the storm around the island temporarily before it picked back up with even more vehemence than before, maybe even with desperation. 

"Back off!" she shouted and started to make a bubble of her powers, clashing with whatever power that was trying to destabilize Izuku's mindscape. 

"I WON'T LET YOU KILL MY SON!" thundered the desperate, powerful voice of a demon, and Ariesvia's breath caught, faltering in her powers and allowing the demon to slip in. The demon then whirled up to stare at Ariesvia, eyes almost glowing in contempt. 

However, all Ariesvia could process was the sheer desperation that the demon had defied her with, the vehement rage and indomitable will that was only reserved for one thing and one thing alone across all races…

"Your son?" she asked mutely as she slowly flew down, the shock not having worn off yet. 

The demon across from her hissed and looked ready to attack. "Yes. And who are you?"

Ariesvia suddenly realized that she was in front of a demon in the body of a half-demon and, perhaps, about to die or worse, but she took a fortifying breath and answered confidently. 

"I am Ariesvia, the daughter of Imperius the Archangel of Valor. I was sent to help Izuku Midoriya in response to his call." She stared into the demon's eyes, willing the father to believe her. 

The demon glared at her for a long minute in which the skies darkened and a storm started to pick up again before he seemingly eased up and sighed. "Now even the angels have joined in, huh?" he muttered to himself and placed his hand on his nose to rub it in frustration. 

Ariesvia was about to ask a question before the mindscape immediately started to shake.  _ ’An earthquake?’  _ As soon as she had the thought, she discarded it; there weren't usually earthquakes in mindscapes. So she glared at the demon, who only looked around as the earthquake intensified and massive tsunamis started to pick up in the distance. Thunder and lightning crackled and struck all around the island. At the same time, Ariesvia's attention was attracted to just how many "disasters'' were happening across the tiny island. 

"Wh—what's going on?" she asked the demon in desperation because all her studies in mind magic had never hinted at something like this!

The demon stared at her, almost judging her soul. She felt like looking away, punching him. or anything else before her thoughts were broken by the demon. "Ariesvia, do you trust that I want Izuku's safety?" he asked. That almost made Ariesvia giggle at how ridiculous such a thing sounded. 

Demons didn’t trust angels and vice versa. Even the rare unions that happened between angels and demons were made under distrust or a mutual rejection of their duties, thus making them demons/angels in genetics only. Trust between a demon and an angel was something that went against everything Ariesvia has ever known. And yet…

She nodded. "For Izuku? Yes."

The demon looked at her with eyes wide for a couple of seconds before he nodded as well."Work with me; we have to reach Izuku. I'm certain he's doing this." He extended a hand and Ariesvia didn't hesitate in taking it. 

Their world became a kaleidoscope of colors, thoughts, emotions and feelings before both of them stared out of one set of eyes. The eyes of Izuku Midoriya, who seemed to be preparing for combat against the two demon dogs. He was causing the energies within him to try to answer his unknowing call and clash constantly, making Izuku himself wobbly and sick.

"Izuku!" both of them shouted, causing everything inside Izuku to go stock still and for the hounds to snarl and bark at Izuku, their blades hackled and pointing at him. 

"W-who… who are…" he trailed off, unsure in his fright. Having been emotionally exhausted before and fallen unconscious with the expectation of death, he was confused by awakening. 

"Izuku,listen to me. We don't have much time. You must calm yourself and use your powers if you want to survive" the demon took over with an authoritative tone. 

"My powers? I have no powers!" Izuku returned heatedly, defaulting to indignation. 

"No, listen to us. You asked for help, didn't you?" Ariesvia interjected. This caused Izuku to freeze up a second time before they felt his sneer, although if it was directed at them or the dogs who were stalking closer, neither knew. 

"All right then, how?" Izuku tried to steady himself when everything started spinning as a result of the energies inside him.

"First, you need to focus; whenever you try to steady yourself, something is trying to help you, get a feel for it," the demon instructed and Izuku tried to follow the command. 

One of the two dogs chose to lunge at him as soon as he closed his eyes. He snapped them open and brought his unharmed hand forward, willing himself to catch the beast, despite the pain and dizziness. 

At Izuku's command, both energies worked together and held the blade-hound mid-air, seemingly via telekinesis. Izuku almost dropped the hound out of shock, but steeled himself at the last second and tried to follow the demon's advice. Feeling the power flow from his hand to keep the hound suspended and confused in the air, he tried to pull more of the power to achieve another effect. His condition only got worse and he tried to hold his head with his other hand before belatedly realizing that that hand didn't exist anymore as intense pain shot up the shredded remnants of his arm, pain that was underlined by the quiet curse the female voice inside his head gave off. 

The male voice spoke again. "First, you must split the energies. Take the easier to use one and direct it around the other. That should allow you to—" 

He was cut off as Izuku's thoughts popped around in a chain reaction, swiftly concluding that storing the easier to use power into his non-existent arm was a good idea before he pushed all his demonic energy into his arm. 

The pain that accompanied the action blanked out all three of their minds and forced them to scream out loudly as the expelled demonic force settled itself to making a container where it had been ordered. Izuku's shrieks of pain kept both dogs away after he accidentally released the one he had captured in his pain.

The torture continued for several seconds before abruptly stopping, leaving Izuku in a state of absolute exhaustion despite having awakened maybe fifteen minutes ago. He tried to catch his breath from all the screaming he had done and heard quiet curses from the male voice in his mind. 

Izuku tried to scratch the back of his head with his missing hand and froze in shock upon actually feeling something touching the back of his head. It felt… scaly, with claws at the ends of his "fingers.” He quickly brought his hand to his face to look at it. 

The arm that greeted him seemed just like what he would imagine a demon's arm looked like, with black scales that shimmered with an emerald sheen all along its surface, thick claws at the end of his fingers, and a sharp point at the elbow. The arm seemed to have "cracks" across it that looked to be absorbing the light around them since the arm seemed to be darker around those parts. He ran his other hand on the fascinating scales and found them to be extremely sharp in their own right. 

Out of the corner of his eye, Izuku saw one of the blade-hounds lunge at him again. His demonic hand lit up in brilliant green light, and he drove his hand through the hound by making his hand into a point like a spear. The hound whimpered, hanging on to his demonic arm, before he threw it down next to him. He felt… stronger now. More powerful, better. As if he had gained something he had lost long ago. 

The remaining blade-hound snarled at him in hatred before it lunged at him. He felt the second energy source course through him and into his hand. He immediately put two and two together and held out his non-demonic hand towards the lunging hound and watched as brilliant light shone through it, blasting the hound back and leaving it with what seemed to be agonizing burns all over its body.

Izuku gritted his teeth as he stood up before sighing to himself. Both of the hounds were slowly dying, whimpering and struggling against their pain. Izuku felt a muted sense of pity for them, which surprised him. He had expected to feel more empathetic towards them, even if they had been threatening to kill him with their every move. 

He shrugged it off and focused on a spot on the ground to talk to the voices in his head. Smoke poured out of the now dark arm and coalesced into a man that looked similar to himself. 

"Izuku… I hadn't gotten much of a look at you but… you've grown nicely. You did well back there. I'm proud." The man seemed to have tears in his eyes as he stared at Izuku with what Izuku had yearned to see in his younger years, what he had looked at the father’s of the other kids in jealousy for.

Fatherly pride. 

"Who are you?" Izuku asked, eyes narrowed and already suspecting the answer. 

"My name is Hisashi Midoriya, and I'm your father." The man smiled at him and Izuku felt like smiling back. But instead, he adopted an exaggerated pained face and summoned up mock-despair. Time for the classic. 

"No… No That's not true! That's impossible!"

Hisashi's face went from hurt to overjoyed in a matter of seconds before he schooled it into one of stern opposition. 

"Look deep in yourself and you will realize it is true…" he trailed off menacingly, even making the iconic breathing sounds, with the added fire effect. 

Izuku shouted "Noooooo!" in despair while clutching his new demonic arm as if it was still cut off. They remained in their positions for a minute before bursting with laughter. 

Hisashi was the one to collect himself first. "So my dear Inko has taught you the family arts… how has she been?" He tilted his head and regarded Izuku once again, checking him over for injuries with his eyes and trying to reconcile with the fact that his son was old enough to kill demons and be a Slayer. 

Izuku smiled wistfully. The distance between himself and his mother seemed very long, now that he managed to survive death. "She was fine. She hasn't changed one bit from the photos, you know? People keep accusing her of having some sort of longevity quirk, and I'm not that far behind them, what with her tears and smiles and all…" 

Hisashi sighed wistfully and murmured in a longing tone, "Great woman, that one… even the demons feared her."

Izuku focused his gaze back on his father. "Really? She doesn't seem all that scary…" 

Hisashi cackled at his son's cluelessness, earning a slug on his arm. "Well, you had to be there, I suppose… look, Izuku. I can't stay with you for long. I'm… I'm holding back a great evil from coming into Limbo, and thus the overworld. I've been doing that since a little after you were born. I'm sorry I haven't been there all this time, but—"

"It's all right. I forgive you." 

Hisashi's entire train of thought crashed in a fiery blaze. "What? Why? I’ve been—"

Izuku smiled at his father. "Busy being a hero? I get it. Besides, I got used to not having a father. Seeing you was just a bonus to surviving this." 

Hisashi shook his head. "And here I had prepared a whole speech about how I was sorry…" He scowled at Izuku which caused the fifteen-year-old to chortle in laughter. 

Hisashi shook his head again, enjoying his son's antics and seeing him again. "I have to go now. I will try and contact you when you're dreaming; that's about all I can do. And if I can't do that… just…" he trailed off, the air around him becoming somber and wistful, "...tell Inko I love her and I miss her, okay?" He suddenly looked at Izuku with such weight in his eyes that the teen just managed to nod before Hisashi disappeared. 

Izuku sighed, staring at the spot where his father had been minutes ago, but decided to get on with it. He barely had any idea what he was going to do here in Limbo, but he knew he was getting back somehow. 

_ "Glad to hear that,"  _ the female voice in his mind said. He had been expecting it and managed not to jump this time.. 

"Where have you been this entire time?" asked as he sat down. He doubted he could walk and talk yet. 

_ "First thing’s first, I'm Ariesvia, an angel and daughter of Imperious the Archangel of Valor."  _

"Hold on, you're an angel, and you're… where?" Izuku asked in confusion. He hadn't expected the second source of power to be an angel when half of him was a demon.

_ "Well, in you. More specifically, in your soul. I was sent to help you as a result of your plea… which, by the way, kind of echoed through the entire place."  _ The girl, Ariesvia, explained. 

"The entire place?" Izuku questioned again, this time out of curiosity.

_ "Well, I would've said Heaven, but apparently it echoed into the ears of 'those who could hear and understand it,' whatever that means,"  _ Ariesvia huffed. The words had confused her as much as they had confused most of the other angels.

"Huh," Izuku said before remembering a piece of information."Hey, how come you're in my body? I thought angels could only be bound by witches?"

_ "Well,"  _ Ariesvia trailed off, carefully picking her words, _ "we haven't actually figured that part out. There was this whole meeting with the heavenly council and everyone had decided to send one of us, but we just expected to be like a support animal, a lesser form bound to you that allowed us to use magic… and when I ended up here, on this island, I mean, I just rolled with it."  _

Izuku filed a note about the island away to ask later and focused on the more important things. "That's odd. Say your name was 'Ari… esvia' right?"

_ "You can just shorten my name if you can't say it; not like you'll be seeing me a lot anyway."  _ Ariesvia seemed to emanate a small sense of despair as she said this, almost as if she didn't want to… do whatever it was that wouldn't have him see her… well, hear her.

"Wait what, why not!?" Izuku asked in confusion, only to get a similar confused feeling mirrored from Ariesvia.

_ "What do you mean why not? Isn't that what happens when an angel is bound? They go to sleep to allow the witches to use their power." _

"But… why? Surely you can use your power better than I can?" Izuku had never actually understood that part; all that he had been taught was that angels went into dormancy to allow witches to use their power. 

_ "Well, the main reason is that we are much more powerful than humans. Our psychic presence will most definitely take over a human's mind if we aren't asleep, but you're a demon, or half-demon, apparently. So I wouldn't know what would happen; this is the first time a union between an angel and a demon like this has happened." _

Izuku tilted his head, considering. "Well… can you tell if you're starting to take over?"

A feeling of suspicion and slight anticipation echoed through him.  _ "Why?"  _ Ariesvia asked in a short tone.

Izuku chuckled. "Why do you think? I'm pretty sure I'm going to need all the intelligence I can get here, and you going to sleep probably won't help matters."

_ "You aren't afraid of… y'know, me taking over your mind?"  _ Ariesvia asked. 

Tentative hope and elation flowed through him and made him smile, his decision was made. "No, I'm not. Stick around. I'm gonna need your help to get through this place and get back home," Izuku said to the angel. He was greeted by a mental squeal and a feeling of warmth and elation. 

Yup. Definitely the right decision.


	3. Fight Through Limbo Pt.1: Hunted

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone, A&D hit 1,000 views in under a month!!!! Dragon and I are still fairly new writers so at least to us this is big. As a thank you to all of you amazing readers we made a slightly longer chapter (roughly double). Anyway enjoy!!!!
> 
> P.S. We will be using Rich Text for now on. This includes the previous 2 chapters.

Izuku was slightly in awe of everything that had happened. He had started the day as any other. He had planned mostly to be ignored, maybe talk Katsuki down from doing something stupid, maybe talk to a few people, then get home and meet his online friends. 

What he hadn't expected was to get into a fight with Bakugo and have a tear open right on their school grounds because of it. He still found it hard to believe how they had managed to rile up the students enough to have a tear open at their school. 

Then he fell into Limbo. He had believed that death had come for him at the young age of fifteen, but nope, he hadn't died in the fall, nor had he died from the two blade-hounds that attacked him. Instead, he managed to summon an angel and his father and use both their energies to kill the demons. Oh yeah, did he mention that he had actually met his father and Izuku discovered that he was apparently a witch now. 

_"You know, when you mention it like that, it's kinda hard for me to believe that too…"_ the voice in his head, Ariesvia the angel, remarked, and Izuku realized and she was probably going to hear all of his thoughts from now on. 

_"Not really, I mean I can hear them now, but that's because you're actively thinking of me while thinking of those thoughts. Kinda like phoning someone… if that makes sense,"_ Ariesvia explained, and Izuku somehow knew that she was making a lost expression, same as his, probably.

_"By the way, I can somewhat monitor your situation from here, but are you all right? You should probably get moving soon…"_ Ariesvia remarked, and Izuku agreed with that. He got up and promptly lost his balance, fell on his knees and mentally waved away the worried feeling that pulsed through him as he got up again. This time, he managed to only stagger a bit before gaining his balance. 

_"My left arm feels heavier now. Is it because of all the scales?"_ He sent the question to Ariesvia while he checked his environment again. It had changed after he killed the two dogs and the door that led into the school from the rooftop, which was hovering a few meters above the ground because the school was inverted, had opened. Seeing that there was no other way to go as the schoolyard he was standing on seemed to be an island, he walked into the school, steps slow and careful. 

_"I think so, what with it being where all your demonic power is stored. I think it's just a heavier arm since it's a completely different thing than a regular human arm."_ Ariesvia hummed inside Izuku's mind while staring out through his eyes. The stairs they were ascending seemed cracked and deteriorated, occasionally marked by holes into the ground below the school. The walls at their sides looked to be almost coated in the black crystalline substance that had spawned the dogs back at the courtyard, causing Izuku to keep an eye on the walls as he went up the stairs and into a hallway. 

"This was our hallway, the first years'. It looks…" Izuku trailed off, unsure as to how he would describe the ruined halls with the cracked walls and the red hue on almost everything.

_"Corrupted? Destroyed? Decimated?"_ Ariesvia supplied him with a few words, and Izuku cracked a smile, although it came out as more of a grimace. 

"I think I'll take 'corrupted', thanks…" he sighed and walked along the hall and to the next set of stairs before stopping in front of what would have been his classroom in the real world. A few of Katsuki's words echoed meaninglessly in his ears as he stared at the rotted and crystallized wood. 

_"I don't think going in would be a good idea,"_ Ariesvia gently told him, to which he quirked an eyebrow. 

_"Why would that be?"_ he thought back, almost amused. 

_"Well, it could be a source of negative energy, if I'm reading your situation correctly… that could mean there's a strong demon in there."_

Izuku was intrigued. After all, he had seen Ariesvia fire a blast of light and make one of those dogs die a horrible death. How strong was she talking about here?.

_"Stronger than what you can do, that's for certain. You don't know how to use your powers yet,"_ Ariesvia reminded him.

Her answer prompted another question to pop into his mind. Izuku turned and walked towards the stairs, intending to get to the ground (or was that top, now?) floor and asked, "So what exactly are my powers? Because It's not exactly possible that I can use both angelic and demonic power, what with being a half demon."

_"I think it's exactly that, actually. You're able to use my powers and the powers you have as a half-demon."_ He felt Ariesvia nod in his head, and that only raised another question for him.

"Okay, but how are you in my body? I'm a man, if you didn't notice." He chuckled and felt a mild embarrassment and annoyance from his tenant. 

_"That part, I don't know. I don't think anyone does, since you have to be a woman in order to have the right genes to be attuned to magic and those genes have to be powerful enough for the potential witch to be tested by their angel-to-be. The witches have to be attuned enough to even sense the angels."_ Ariesvia recited the information as if reading from a textbook, and Izuku cracked another smile at imagining the girl reading from a huge tome with round glasses. Wait a minute... 

"Why do I vaguely know what you look like?" Izuku scrunched up his face in confusion. He hadn't seen Ariesvia, he was sure of it.

_"Well, I am in the one place you have the utmost knowledge of, of course you would know how I look,"_ she replied. _"Back to my original point. While you are most certainly male, you also skipped the entire ritual of summoning one of us and going through a test. In fact, you've kind of built a golden bridge into your soul. It's how I got in so easily."_ Izuku felt her mental shrugg.

"So that last bit comes from me being a half-demon or something?" Izuku questioned, looking at the entrance hall where he had arrived before taking a seat on one of the stairway stairs and looking up into the walkway. Being inverted, he had decided, was weird. 

_"Maybe, though I can't say for sure. Even the Angiris Council thought you were a human. Actually, I wonder how my father is bearing the news of how I'm inside a demon._ Ariesvia put a finger on her lip and chuckled before abruptly tensing up. _"Hey! I sense negative energy swirling; get ready for a fight,"_ she warned. He followed her lead and got up, preparing himself to dodge or attack. His left arm started shining bright green again and he stared ahead at the humanoid puppet-like demons crawling out of the black crystalline substance coating the walls. He counted only four, thankfully.

"What the hell are those?" Izuku grumbled as he stared at the human-like puppets. 

_"Marionettes. They're a common type of lesser demon. They wear clothes that look like what's commonly worn wherever they are, and as you've noticed, they have strings that connect them somewhere. Don't try to follow them; the source causes temporary amnesia to anyone that looks at it,"_ Ariesvia advised him, and while he found it odd, he did also know that she knew the most about demons. 

_"Right, you should charge them while they're laughing. They're agile, and while they may look human, their movements won't be similar,"_ she cautioned him. He ran towards one of them, intending to run his demonic hand through them like he did the dog. 

He reached the one wearing a white blazer, as opposed to the normal school uniforms the other demons wore, and thrust out his hand, only to have the demon slide to the right. He felt a tingling on his hand and heard Ariesvia telling him to point his other hand to his side. He paid no mind to the resulting flash of light and the slight burns that he left on his human-looking arm and continued trying to stab the demon, who kept dodging by contorting its wooden body in strange ways and trying to slash at him with the blades it held in its hands. 

_"Get back and thrust your other hand forward!"_ Ariesvia commanded him. He followed that order, jumping back and outstretching his other hand. His hand exploded in brilliant golden light, pushing him further back and separating him from the demons.

_"All right,"_ Ariesvia sighed. _"This isn't going to work. I wanted you to practice with it a little first, but it looks like we have no choice but trial by fire. Hold out your right hand, like you're gripping a rod."_ He obeyed, especially as he couldn’t either of his powers yet. 

He wasn't exactly surprised when his hand glowed a greenish gold and a scythe appeared in it. He inspected the weapon for a moment. The golden-white blade was long and curved, coming off the tip of the handle at its heel. The handle itself looked to be made out of greenish stone, and it had two grips protruding from opposite ends that resembled whittled branches.

_"It's my scythe, Osiris, although it seems to have changed a bit... you're gonna have to use that for now—Careful! They're throwing blades!"_ Ariesvia interrupted herself, and Izuku immediately threw himself to the side, dodging a short curved blade thrown from a marionette that had its hand outstretched. As Izuku watched, the marionette pulled out another blade from its sleeve. 

Izuku grimaced. Why hadn't he taken the scythe training option in the school's combat classes again? Oh right; he’d thought he wouldn't have a use for it. And this is what he got. He sometimes wanted to curse his luck. 

He shook his head and charged towards the demons again, holding the weapon by its middle in his non-demonic hand and using his other hand to swat away two more thrown blades before dashing the short distance remaining between him and his target. He spun around twice, swinging the scythe around in large arcs. Two of the marionettes folded their torsos against their heads and avoided the sweeping scythe, so Izuku wasted no time slashing his claws through the throats of the ones that followed, hoping that having no heads meant that they died.

He was proven wrong when one of the fallen marionettes made a jump for him and caused him to dissect it with his scythe, which finally made it fall apart. 

Izuku was given no time to celebrate, however, as the two that had dodged his sweep lunged at his throat from behind him. He only managed to turn his torso around and hold his demonic arm against the blades, causing them to break apart. He mentally thanked Ariesvia before taking a counter swing with his scythe, which the marionettes dodged back from. Ariesvia called out another warning which had Izuku rolling forward and swiping behind him, taking off the retreating arm of another marionette before lunging forward and bringing his scythe down from overhead, slicing the would-be backstabber into two. 

He quickly whirled around, deflecting the blades sailing towards him with his scythe and panted in exhaustion. _"At least there's only two remaining. C'mon, we got this!"_ Ariesvia urged him, and Izuku smiled briefly before he lunged forward again, dragging his scythe on the ground and swinging it in front of the demons, missing them by inches but throwing the chunks of the ground that the scythe had dug up. The demons shrieked and reeled backwards as the stone fragments showered over them, so Izuku wasted no time slashing at their throats and bringing his scythe down, blade first, into the gut of one of the two. The creature struggled against the blade in its stomach before collapsing lifelessly to the ground.

Izuku took a swipe towards the other downed demon, but it managed to dodge out of the way. It lunged at his feet first and scored a hit on his gut, causing him to double over. The demon wrapped its legs around his back. It readied its blades, but Izuku backed into a wall and smashed the demon against it, causing it to shriek again. He dropped the scythe and grabbed the demon's legs and spun himself around with his arms held overhead, causing the demon to follow his path and smash into the wall again. He felt another tingle in his non-demonic arm and held it in front of the face of the last demon.

He couldn't say he didn't feel cathartic joy in watching its expression as it was consumed in the brilliant golden light. 

_"So…"_ Ariesvia began after Izuku had rested for a few moments. _"That happened."_

Izuku grimaced. He was happy to survive, but also wasn't happy at how tired he was. Sure, he could somewhat handle himself, but if it weren't for Aries, he would've been dead. 

"Thanks for that, by the way. You saved me a lot there." Izuku smiled while leaning against the wall opposite of where he had smashed his back. He felt that if he sat down, he wouldn't be able to get up for a very long time. That would just force him to sit in paranoia, not willing to get up but not willing to sit and rest. 

_"Oh it's nothing, really. I came here to do that, after all. He he he."_ Ariesvia laughed awkwardly, but he felt her smile and the rush of warmth through him, so he counted it okay. 

However, Ariesvia was quick to get back into the matter of survival. _"I think you and I both know that you need at least some kind of training. You can handle yourself, but—"_

"But I nearly got killed without you? you're right," Izuku grumbled.. "Although how would I do it? I don't even know how to use a scythe, which seems to be my main weapon for the time being." 

Ariesvia hummed and began to explain. _"I can give you my knowledge on how to use it. It would be long and little better than just learning from a proper master, but I was also talking about magic. You can't rely on me to cast and just wail away at things."_

"Won't that require even more training?" Izuku asked, worry coloring his tone. He was pretty sure there wasn't that much time to train, considering he was essentially in a demon breeding ground where humans and angels, like either of them, were lightning rods for demon attacks. 

_"Again, you'll have to use what I know and add your experiments on top of it. We need to go; more demons should be arriving soon,"_ she cautioned him while vowing to herself to find some way of looking around the area without using Izuku's eyes. 

Izuku grimaced and heaved himself off of the wall he was leaning against and went to get out of the school. He didn't know what he would do now, but he was sure he and Ariesvia would find a way. 

**6 Month Later**

Izuku dashed forward, Osiris trailing behind him with a light blue hue coming off of it. He stopped abruptly and used the momentum to spin himself around, rounding up the demons he was currently dealing with. He then quickly brought his scythe around for an overhead strike, slashing the demons apart. 

He checked around him in wary silence, tense and waiting. 

_"It's fine. I don't sense anyone else, Izuku."_

Only when Ariesvia assured him did he let the scythe vanish from his hand. He heaved a sigh and wiped his forehead with his forearm.

"Glad that's over," he remarked before focusing himself on the bisected stone-like demons in front of him, looking to see if he could make use of their corpses in any way. He shook his head after a couple minutes of looking and held out his demonic hand towards the middle of the cadavers. It briefly lit up emerald green and light surged forth from the corpses and into his arm, removing some of the stress lines from Izuku's face and causing him to heave another sigh, this time one of relief. 

"That hit the spot. Now we just need to find a river," he thought aloud as he stretched. It had been six months since he was dropped into Limbo, six months of constant movement and near-constant combat. It had added both good and bad things to his physique. For starters, he was taller. The few centimeters he had gained meant he didn't have to swing at a forty-five degree angle to attack the heads of demons. It added some (a lot, according to Ariesvia) muscle to his frame.

Further, he and Ariesvia had managed a lot of things in their magic, the best of which was giving Ariesvia a three-hundred-and-sixty degree field of vision even if she wasn't looking out of his eyes. She'd compared it to a sonar.

_"We should get moving soon, Izuku. I doubt the streets of Tokyo would be free of demons for long."_ Aries cautioned him in his mind. He had taken to calling her that and she had accepted it readily, both of them not wanting to deal with a longer name. 

"Right. I just wish we could've found some more leathered demons. My notebook is almost filled up…" he mused thoughtfully and heard Aries chuckle in his mind. 

_"It astounds me how adaptable you are, Izuku."_ A feeling of alertness rolled though his mind, instantly causing his body to tense for combat _“Be careful, she’s back. I can feel her up near the buildings.”_

From the shadows of the alleys ahead, an arrow of purple energy came flying at him. Izuku easily dodged it, running down the street of the city where they had stopped for a while. They had been followed for a long time now, but their hunter, who was usually ever silent, now laughed a soft, almost echoing giggle. 

_"Be careful Izuku, I think she's looking for a fight now…"_ Aries cautioned him.

Izuku gritted his teeth. "Great, just what we needed," he grumbled. It had been a long day of fighting demons already; he didn't exactly want one that seemed a lot stronger than the average.

"Oh really? I am sooo happy to hear that!" exclaimed a girlish voice just as Izuku ran out into a town square. The voice immediately attracted the half demon's attention to the rooftops of the street he'd run out of and he saw another demon, standing menacingly. 

_"Be careful, Izuku. That isn't a normal Hunter…"_

Izuku wanted to curse. When they were first attacked by an arrow that had destroyed the platform they were standing on to disintegrate, they'd theorized that they were being chased by a hunter demon, an ape-like humanoid who used knives, grappling hooks, and bows. But now, looking at the tall, slender, grey-skinned,female figure staring back down at him, it was very clear that wasn't the case. 

"Now that I've chased you to a suitable place… LET'S PLAY!" the female demon exclaimed and jumped off the building and straight to where he stood. 

He threw himself back, avoiding both her landing and her subsequent swing of her war scythe. He took a moment to examine the demon. Besides the feminine figure, the demon had long twin pigtails riding to her hips. Her clothing consisted of nearly skin-tight cloth that covered most of her body, with the exceptions of her face, legs and midriff. 

"Done staring? I wanna play already!" she exclaimed and Izuku felt Ariesvia's annoyance at both him and the demon rise up. He grumbled, but summoned his scythe anyway. He had seen talking demons before, but he hadn't seen any demon that had a definitive personality. 

He was given no time to wonder about that as the demon dashed at him with her war scythe blade-first, clearly intending to skewer him through it. He smirked, leapt forwards and laid his demonic hand on the staff, pulling it back and pulling himself horizontally to the ground, using the momentum to swing the scythe at the demon, who giggled and backed away, missing his offensive by centimeters. 

"That isn't **ALL you** got, right stud?" she smirked and held out a hand. Purple light blazed through it before materializing into the same staff that he had just left behind. 

"Okay, so you can't be disarmed… good to know," Izuku grumbled to himself, ignoring the last bit she said and dashed forward again, intent on winning this fight. The demon's smirk never faded as he approached and started to twirl and swing his scythe; indeed, she almost seemed to be enjoying dodging and deflecting his attacks. 

_"I don't like this…"_ Aries remarked as she set loose a light arrow from over his shoulder. He was very glad that they had practiced that as the demon, who was more skilled with her weapon than he was with his scythe, was forced to deflect away the light arrow by coating her staff with demonic energy. This allowed him to back off and make a pulling motion with his demonic hand, causing the black crystalline substance on the sidewalks to burst forth like a million tiny spears, sprouting from her chest.

Despite being stabbed with the crystalline spikes clearly visible through her torso, her shocked expression lasted only a few moments before she laughed in delight and stepped forward, chasing after him as he sent a volley of light arrows and broken rubble via telekinesis. 

However, it was clear they needed to work on more offensive options as the demon easily slipped through his volley and slashed at him with the war scythe, cackling still. He deflected the weapon with his own before he slashed at her with his demonic hand. The demon bent at the waist to avoid his attack and dove backwards, melding with the waters that Izuku just noticed had flooded the square, softly cursing upon seeing it.

_"She must have water-based abilities as well. it's like those cave demons all over again,"_ Ariesvia remarked, and a feeling of hesitation washed through Izuku, but the angel nevertheless made a few light orbs around him, preparing to shoot them in whatever direction the demon came out of. 

The waters below them rippled and waved. They spotted some parts of the demon showing up on the surface and reacted several times, only for her to dive into what was ankle deep water again and again, with her taunting giggles echoing through the place. 

"I thought wack-a-mole was supposed to be played on ground, damnit!" Izuku cursed as they missed the demon yet again and were greeted with mocking laughter. 

"I am gonna enjoy seeing her turn into energy, you know?" he murmured to Ariesvia only to receive feelings of mild confusion and hesitant agreement. 

"Not if you don't pay any attention!" a shout came from his right. He swung his scythe and was surprised when he only cut through the air. His surprise turned to pain as the demon’s war scythe came from behind and struck through his scaled arm, drawing out an agonized scream. He was then kicked in the side, the demon rising out of the water and summoning her weapon back, smiling amusedly all the while.

Izuku struggled to his feet, his demonic arm feeling pain for the first time. He glared at the demon with hate-filled eyes, thoughts of his possible death squashed by both him and Ariesvia, who was also trying to restore whatever she could. The demon only laughed in delight at him, which only pissed him off further. 

"Oooh, you're really strong aren't you? Not many can just take a wound like that!" she exclaimed with honest admiration in her tone, something that confused only Ariesvia as Izuku's thoughts were slowly locking themselves into a massive spiral of rage for the sake of survival. 

"Yeah, and I'm itching to test whether you can survive **being pulled to ribbons!** " Izuku's comeback changed halfway into a distorted warcry. He dashed at the demon across from him at a speed that neither the demon nor Ariesvia had seen from Izuku before. 

However, while Izuku was faster, the demon was still better at her weapon than Izuku, not to mention slightly taller, which allowed her to keep the rampaging half-demon in check by using her war scythe like a spear. Green and gold electricity ran across Izuku's body and weapon as he swung, twirled, and slashed like a man possessed, growling and snarling at every missed or deflected attack. He soon took to using magic, unheeding of the screams of the angel within as he began tossing out light arrows and destroyed rubble alike, blinded by desperation and rage in equal measures.

The demon, who was cackling at first, slowly started to lose her delighted expression as Izuku got even more aggressive. Her expression turned serious as she coated her warscythe with her demonic energy and stabbed the weapon towards Izuku, who grinned savagely and caused his own scythe to glow in a disturbing combination of both angelic and demonic energies, still deaf to the pained screams of his partner as he harshly pulled on her power even more.

He directed the warscythe sailing towards him straight to the ground and swung forth, grinning savagely at his triumph, only to watch in enraged confusion as the demon continued her stabbing motion, driving her weapon into the ground and causing another blast of demonic energy to accompany Izuku's blasts temporarily staggering the berserk half demon. She swung around her polearm, her blade-like legs slashing two deep gouges in his chest. He bit back a scream as the newly opened wounds burnt in agony. 

The agony of the wounds rushed back to him as quickly as the screams of his partner did. The sheer shock of hearing Ariesvia scream in such pain immediately stopped Izuku, causing all three parties to be left panting and tired in what had once been a town square, but now could only be called a crater. 

_"Izuku…"_ The angel trailed off, unsure of what to say as she was assaulted by the feelings of deep regret and self hatred, feelings clear to her just as her own. Izuku hadn't meant to hurt her, hadn't meant to almost pull her apart by pulling on her powers like that, and was now in shock that he had done something like that. 

"I… this didn't turn out all that fun, huh?" the demon remarked and Izuku's head snapped back up, hatred still swirling in his eyes before confusion and then shocked realization replaced them as the odd behavior of the demon clicked in place for him. 

"You… you weren't taunting me to kill me. You never wanted that; you genuinely wanted to have fun?" Izuku asked, still reeling from the sheer emotion he had gone through in a matter of seconds. 

The demon smiled unsurely. "Uhm… yes?" she ventured and almost jumped back in fright when Izuku began laughing hysterically, the laughter echoing through the city and lasting until Izuku collapsed onto his side, out of breath once more. The echoes ringing out almost hauntingly. 

"There are other ways of having fun, you know," he whispered in a cracked voice, causing the demon’s face to scrunch up. 

"Yes, but you're too young for those, even if you look my type," she mused quietly. Izuku stared at her wide-eyed and blushing a little. 

_"Uhm… Izuku?"_ Ariesvia tried to get her partner to respond, only to get absolutely nothing in return besides the tangled mess of emotions Izuku was currently going through. _"Izuku? Are you okay?"_ she asked and almost immediately facepalmed. Of course he wasn’t okay. He wasn't an angel, he must think she hated him now. Right, then. 

_"Izuku, I don't—"_ she began at the same time as the demon to say something, but they were both interrupted.

"Shut. Up."

Izuku may have mumbled those words, but the vehemence and insistence he said them with may as well have made them a gunshot. 

"Just, both of you. Shut up for a moment…" Izuku trailed off, not noticing the demon's confused expression. 

"So, let me get this straight," he murmured, but both the angel and the demon felt a bit of dread roll down their spines. "I have nearly killed my only friend, almost died, and caused so much destruction that, I'm sure it is going to be reflected back into the real world somehow... I did all of that. All of that, just so you could have **FUN**!?" Izuku's last word became distorted again and rang out around the crater, only underlined by Izuku heavily breathing. 

The demon, instead of being cowed, looked only confused. "I… we did fight? So, isn't it natural for nearly all of that to happen?"

Izuku glared at her and opened his mouth only to be interrupted by Ariesvia. 

_"How would she know?_ she asked quickly yet hesitantly, causing Izuku to stop in confusion. Ariesvia cleared her throat before continuing. _" I mean, how would she know that fighting for fun is not a normal thing? How would she know that you don't stalk people you want to fight for fun? What I really mean is, she doesn't have the same standards that you do. She's been in Limbo for all her life because she's a demon. You can't judge her like you would judge other demons or humans…"_ she trailed off, unsure of where she was going. She didn't exactly want to defend this demon, but she had to give Izuku the facts that he was too angry to consider at this time. She was, after all, here to help Izuku, and they certainly didn't need to fight the demon again. 

Izuku growled in frustration, but couldn't keep the memories away, the memories of being scoffed at because his observations were creepy, memories of people looking at him as if he was spun glass, memories of the times where he lost potential friends because he hadn't had an idea what to say and cried his heart out. He hated the fact that sympathizing with the demon across from him, still staring at him in trepidation, her body language indicating that she was prepared to fight or flee, that she expected him to attack her again. He had done that exact same thing before. He had been in her position. He had that readiness to run or fight for a long time until he'd learned not to reach out to others for friendship and wait for others to ask before he talked. He'd learned… 

He shook his head, his roaring anger beaten down by the sorrow of memories, what he'd almost done and was at the precipice of doing. He'd almost killed his only friend and inflicted the torture he endured on another, even if she was a demon. She was intelligent; that counted. Didn't it? 

He steeled himself and looked at the demon, having to tilt his eyes upwards to do so. The way she recoiled from his determined gaze would have been funny and a little bit concerning if his thoughts weren't so nebulous. 

"I… forgive you," Izuku forced himself to say. "I understand that you don't know how to interact with others for the purpose of having fun." "I understand that. Even though it will take me some time not to be angry at you again…" he said, telling her as well as himself before he remembered the fact that they probably wouldn't stick together. He was honestly a little relieved and a little worried at the realization. "...that is, if we encounter each other again," He finished, and the demon smiled back at him mischievously. 

"Huh? You're letting go of what you own that easily, master?" She purred that last part and completely abolished all the other thoughts inside Izuku's head, causing him to freeze in place with a blush, her words echoing in his head. He vaguely heard the roaring laughter of Aries in his mind, but didn't focus on that. 

"M-master?" Izuku asked, the squeak in his voice causing the demon to break down in laughter, clutching her stomach as he watched her.

It was a few minutes before all three of them calmed. The demon smiled at Izuku. "You did win in a way, so you get me to use. Only, I didn't die. So I have to either die to satisfy the pact of devouring, or…" she trailed off and approached him, her form shrinking to match his size and allowing her to lean into his personal space. 

"... Be yours, mind, body and energy…" she got closer with each word and stared at Izuku who was frozen in embarrassment and not a small amount of "enjoyment." She then blew on his face and laughed as he sputtered. 

She leaned back out of his personal space and grinned at him while he stared at her with narrowed eyes, making her chuckle still. "I was serious, though. You have taken the energies of whatever demon you entered a fight with. I'm no different, except the fact that you 'could've' won instead of 'did,' since I surrendered by declaring you to be the winner."

_"Oh this is great! There's a veritable storm of emotions here!"_ Ariesvia cackled in his mind, too amused by the abrupt changing of Izuku's thoughts and emotions to really pay attention to the context. 

Her amusement, however, was cut off abruptly when she felt what was almost a wave of presences coming from all around them. _"Izuku! You have to run! There's… there's demons coming from nearly everywhere!"_ she shouted in his mind, which had the effect of abruptly stopping his embarrassment and switching to a more serious mental place. The demon, who noticed the change, raised a non-existent brow and hummed her curiosity, making Izuku look back at her. She marveled at the shattered green eyes he had for a second before returning her attention to what he was going to say. 

"Demons, coming from everywhere, dammit. They must've noticed the power I've put out!" Izuku growled and got wary as the demon pulled her warscythe again. 

"Show me our direction of attack, then! If they're coming from everywhere, then we just hit everywhere and we're golden!" She grinned and watched as Izuku narrowed his eyes at her.

He thought for a few seconds, but then nodded. "We need to get to one of the streets. We could go from the top of buildings, but—" They both rolled away from one another as a concrete boulder crashed into where they were talking. A massive, four-armed demon that was seemingly made of rusted steel roared at them from the street. Izuku ran into the former town square. 

"Oh, joy. Rust giants," the demon cursed before she slammed her weapon down and mimed pulling an arrow. Izuku watched in fascination as dark purple energy lines came out from both sides of the embedded weapon and served to make a bow out of energy. The demon let go of the conjured arrow and they watched as it exploded, doing some damage to the crowd that was rushing at them from that end of the square, although the rushing demons didn't so much as flinch. That got both of them to grimace. 

"Looks like we're gonna need to give it our all, master," the demon called and tensed her legs. 

"You're gonna keep calling me that, huh?" Izuku groused as he summoned his scythe again, this time putting it into his demonic hand and causing it to lose some of its brilliance. 

"Yes, and I presume you're just going to call me 'demon'?" The demon cocked her head at him. Her question made Izuku pause and peruse through the names he had in his mind. He selected one that he felt fit most.

"Artemisia, or Artemis, for short." Izuku nodded to himself as he dashed forward, the dimmed scythe elongating and developing more blades along the extended handle as Izuku kept running forwards, dodging a few other attacks thrown at him from the demons at the sides. As soon as he got within an arm's reach of one of the first demons, he swung his scythe in front of him with a grunt of effort. Osiris was now twelve meters long, with added blades to match. The scythe tore through the demons like a hot knife through butter, killing some and dismembering most. He swung again and sent another wave of casualties through the demons. A Rust Giant had the brilliant idea to grab the swinging scythe in the third swing. Izuku smirked and tugged the pole of the scythe back, forcing the blade to shrink and the extra blades to shred whatever was preventing them from collapsing. 

He felt Ariesvia call out a warning to look behind him, but a volley of purple arrows rained in a line behind him, forming a wall of energy explosions. He felt Ariesvia's mental shrug in his mind and started to mold his energy to use telekinesis. He felt her respond to it before he backed out and dodged an attacking demon. Feeling, but not acknowledging, Ariesvia's frown, at his reluctance to use her power with his again. He also carefully didn't think about the screams of the angel.

A roar and the whizzing of a light arrow reminded him to get back in action, and he obeyed the call.

Izuku quickly looked around and then backed off from another attacking demon. He slashed his scythe through it before he crouched on his landing and placed his demonic hand, scythe and all, on the ground. It trembled but obeyed his command and abruptly there was a thirty meter wide gap leading to the void between this side of the street and the other side. The shrieks of surprised demons as they fell in satisfied a part of Izuku, like demons’ deaths always seemed to do. 

However, some demons just jumped, glided, or flew across to get to Izuku, allowing Artemis to pick off a few of them with her arrows in the process. Those that jumped, Izuku made quick work of with his scythe and demon arm. They soon fell into a rhythm; Izuku would attack, Ariesvia would clear out those left injured around them, and Artemisia would launch a peppering attack. On and on they went, but as they did, they realized their stamina and powers were waning, but the demons weren't. This caused Izuku to curse in his mind as he held off a blade from a Marionette and then ducked, allowing Artemisia to deliver an arrow through its head. Ariesvia launched another wave of bolts with a frustrated growl. Another volley of arrows landed around them. This time, they all exploded, causing Izuku to cover his eyes. 

He heard someone landing next to him and opened his eyes to see Artemis, desperation swirling in her golden eyes. "Master! We're gonna have to take the hard route, you have to merge us!" she pleaded. Izuku's brain stopped for a moment before he remembered that time was very limited and he refocused back on Artemis. 

"What are you talking about? Merging?" Izuku asked, relaying not only his, but Ariesvia's confusion. 

"You own my energy now and that's what determined my form. You have to mold it to somehow equip me; it's the only way we have of getting out of this!" Artemis explained hastily and stared deep into Izuku's eyes, willing him to understand what she wanted him to do. 

Luckily for her, he did. "Right, I'll do that as soon as I know how." Izuku wanted to crack a smile, but it came out as more of a grimace instead. 

Artemisia shot a few more arrows and caused another wall of cascading explosions. "Just think of me as yours! You used your own energy well enough. Now you have to use me!" She exclaimed, all too aware that her earlier teasing might've just made it harder for Izuku to do and might've killed them both. 

Indeed, Izuku was immediately reminded of her teasing and lightly blushed, unable to stop himself despite being in a life-or-death scenario. But eventually, he managed to reach and take ahold of her energy in sheer desperation and started to mold it, willing it. Wanting it to be a part of himself. He felt his arm pulse with a sort of hunger and he pushed the energy away from it, knowing somehow that his arm would simply "add it to the pile," so to speak. 

Slowly, ever so slowly, did the energy manage to reach his other arm and begin to coalesce on it. Slowly taking the form of a gauntlet, mounted with a sleek barrel that started near the elbow and ended at the wrist. It had six silver wings bending clockwise with light purple circles inside of the wings. The wings came out of the center of the barrel in all directions, almost resembling a shield. The rest of the gauntlet was silver and almost had an angelic appearance, covering his arm to the elbow. 

He felt Ariesvia's raised eyebrow and heard the whistle of Artemis. "Nice going," she remarked when the enraged shrieks of the demons and a stray concrete boulder Ariesvia had to blade away reminded them they were in the middle of a battle.

"Right, you need to get the high ground master, just jump off the wall!" Artemis interrupted his thinking on how to climb a building, leaving Izuku little choice but to obey and run straight over to the wall while letting loose wild blasts from his gauntlet and hacking and slashing with his demonic hand. He vaguely heard Artemis growl about him letting off wild blasts crudely, but didn't feel the need to comment on it as he ran up the building, thanking Ariesvia for her insistence in at least being able to somewhat traverse vertical surfaces when he had refused to learn about making platforms on which to jump on the fear of pain. 

He jumped, high as he could onto the wall and used his demonic hand and legs to force his momentum into the wall, before kicking off even higher using the kickback of the initial jump. 

_"Now, we need to fire this gauntlet using the power of the demons we've already killed. I can gather that kind of energy; you just need to—"_

Izuku couldn't give much thought to how Artemis was speaking through his mind as he aimed the barrel of his new gauntlet down, the wings on its design collapsing into the gauntlet to provide a bigger barrel. Artemis pulled all the idle demonic energy from the air violently, causing small storms to pick up across the battlefield and for the gauntlet to glow with a brilliant but ominous purple light. Green and gold electricity ran across it, utilizing every energy source the weapon could find. 

_"Now hold on! You can't just shoot a hole into the surface of Limb—"_

Ariesvia tried to stop them, but was interrupted by Artemis shouting _"Fire! Fire now!"_

Izuku gritted his teeth and grinned maniacally, shaking almost uncontrollably in his efforts to hold in the energy that had been collected from both of them and their environment before letting the collected energy in the gauntlet loose. The already glowing gauntlet’s brilliance intensified as the enlarged barrel fired. Izuku was propelled upwards and a gigantic ray of dark purple, emerald, and gold energy descended into the surface of the Limbo, the ray causing a spectacular wave of purplish white energy to ripple outward from the point of impact, wiping out the demons, the buildings, the city, and eventually even digging into the ground further than Artemis and Izuku's battle ever would have. 

It was a ruined city full of demons that Izuku had jumped up from. What he landed on was more or less a desert. The massive ray he had fired had pulverized the dirt and concrete of the city and turned it all into sand and ash. The particles from the ray were still hanging in the air. Izuku hadn't stopped shaking despite having lost the massive reservoir that had been built up. 

Izuku fell onto his ass and panted, allowing his body to rest after the insane stunt he had pulled.

_"Oh dear, oh dear. How are we gonna explain this? We don't even know how much the Limbo reflects overworld, how in heaven are we gonna predict if we have hurt anyone? What if all of this was reflected into the overworld?"_ Ariesvia panicked inside their mind, but Izuku, being too tired to panic, casually remembered the time Endeavour had incinerated a building. Although he was forced to go into therapy a while after that, the actual building was untouched, except being a bit hotter. 

"We should probably be fine;, at most, it was an earthquake…" he trailed off, hoping that it had worked as he remembered or else he was going to suffer a lot of guilt when he got back. 

_"Wait, we're going into the overworld?"_ He heard the newest resident in his head ask in surprise.

He chuckled dryly. "Did you think I was a demon?"

_"Well, no. But I also didn't imagine I would have a sister when you merged me into you,"_ Artemis returned, and Izuku felt as if she was staring at Ariesvia, who was doing the same thing to her.

_"S-sister!?"_ the angel exclaimed and Izuku forced himself up to begin walking. They would go nowhere fast if he just stayed in place. 

_"Well, master owns us both, so we're technically sisters, aren't we?"_ Artemis reasoned

Izuku felt the need to be slightly cheeky. "Doesn't that only work on harems, though?"

_"This isn't a harem?"_

"..."

_"..."_

_"Yeah, no."_ /"Yeah, no." Ariesvia and Izuku deadpanned together.

_"Pity. I was looking forward to being used by my Master,"_ Artemis purred in response to their deadpan answer causing a long bout of embarrassed silence as Izuku walked deeper into the city. 

**Some Time Later**

The crackling flames drowned out the wind in the new desert as a figure, almost half a building tall, stepped onto the sands, his flaming body causing the sand to sizzle and melt. 

The figure’s body was made of solid obsidian. It resembled a minotaur with flaming hair, horns, and sword. Magma poured from the cracks and scars that riddled its body, covering just about everywhere else.. Berial the Fire Lord sniffed the air, feeling the immense demonic energies that had once been here. Truthfully, he had no need to take stock of the energies when he could just look at the cityscape-turned-desert around him to identify that a huge battle went on in this place. But that wouldn't do his new opponent justice.

And so, the Minotaur continued feeling out the energies and mapping out the events that took place, carefully preparing for his newest opponent. He grinned darkly as his steps in the sand left behind glass. Finally, a worthy opponent. Their battle would be legendary!


	4. The Dethroned King

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone sorry for the delay in chapters and for this one being shorter. We actually have another chapter also practically done which will be uploaded soon! Read end notes for important information.

Pain.

It was all Izuku had felt for the last few days. He'd withstood his hunger for all these months by his demonic heritage, according to Ariesvia. Being half-demon saved him from many things, but hunger and thirst weren't included on that list. Thirst he could easily take care of by going to the forests and finding a river.

But as one would have expected, Limbo was desolate when it came to wildlife or any sort of edible plants. In fact, one of them had tried to eat him. That had led to his discovery of plant demons. Yup, Plant. Demons. He hated the very thought of it, but at least they were rooted like other plants, so he wouldn't suddenly see someone's garden eating them alive should a Tear open. 

On that note, he found it incredibly ironic that he wished for a Tear opening, going so far as to stalk herds of weaker demons waiting for them to open one. Despite how many Tears opened daily in just the Shizuoka prefecture, he couldn't seem to find any. The demons either sensed him and he had to fight them off, or they would wander aimlessly until his growling stomach gave him away!

_ Groooowl... _

_ "Case in point…" _ He sighed. He’d thought he had felt hungry before when his mother started to come in late because she had emergency shifts all the time and he hadn't known how to cook. 

He would've laughed in his child self's face if he could now. He hadn't known hunger before. Where it had been a simple pang on his stomach and the wish for something to eat, now it was a thought-consuming thing. Everything and anything he looked at, his first thought was about if he could eat it. He couldn't keep himself from thinking about this unbelievable feeling of pain in his stomach and the desire to just consume  _ something. _ It was so intense that it made him trip and fall by drawing his attention that way too much. 

He shook his head and looked ahead. This wasn't the time to dwell on his hunger, no matter how much it pulled at his attention. He needed to get out of here. Artemis had warned him that something was tracking him. She explained how she knew in some jargon-filled explanation, but he didn't currently have the brainpower, nor the will, to dissect it. 

His eyes immediately locked onto a boar-like form that was barreling down the street and onto the road where Izuku was walking. His mind returned to the subject of his hunger without his permission and a chant of ‘ _ Pork katsu; slice it, roast it, put it in a stew…’ _ began to play in his mind. His mouth started to water. He instinctively called his scythe and took a step forward, readying himself to lunge forward. 

He almost jumped when a roar interrupted his thoughts, and a wolf, covered with a bone exoskeleton, jumped out of the side alley where the boar had come from. It jumped on the boar, and the demon shrieked in... rage? Pain? Izuku didn't really know; all he really knew was that he was mad at the wolf-like demon and wanted to kill it for…  _ ’For what?’ _ He questioned himself and instantly came to the realization that he had been planning to eat the boar-like demon. 

Revulsion pulsed through him and he felt the typical convulsions of puking, even though he just dry heaved.  _ ‘How? How the hell…’ _ he wanted to ask, even shout at himself for that thought. He couldn't find it within himself to fault his almost delirious line of thought which had made him want to eat a demon. He had thought of nothing else for the past few days and he could feel his pain get worse and worse as the time went on. 

_ "Izuku…"  _ Ariesvia muttered, and Izuku could feel her trying to put words to her thoughts. She didn’t know what to do; according to her, angels didn’t need food, and Artemis had said that demons usually only ate—

_ "That's it! Izuku!"  _ Her mental shout pierced through the ravenous fog that clouded his mind and he turned his attention to her.  _ "You need to kill that demon, I think I have an idea on how to solve this!" _

She didn't need to clarify what 'this' meant; they both knew, and apparently, Izuku didn't need much motivation. He quickly fired several blasts from Artemis at the wolf-like creature, cracking and in some places breaking through its armor. It looked back at him and howled, looking to intimidate him. Izuku just used the time to fire another blast straight into its mouth. The wolf saw it coming and dodged it by jumping to the left. Izuku smirked savagely, some primal instinct in him taking glee in the hunt. 

He summoned and swung his scythe, extending it mid-swing when the wolf tried to jump backwards to avoid the blow, taking it by surprise. The "fangs" of the extended scythe bit into the side of the wolf, completely ignoring its bone armor. It yelped as it hit the ground. Izuku's quickly dimming thoughts took a turn for the worse, causing him to let go of his scythe and jump on the wolf, tearing at it with both his hands. He didn’t even register the pain that pulsed through his human half at this action. His earlier smirk transformed into a show of teeth as thoughts of finally eating filled Izuku. 

_ ".. ait! I SAID WAIT, DAMN YOU!" _

The mental shout caused him to jump in the air. His heart rate spiked to an incredible rate. He looked at the whimpering wolf under him and immediately felt a second wave of revulsion. It looked like the wolf had been through a blender and was soaked in blood. His blood. He could feel the pain in his human hand now, but he couldn't bring himself to stare at it. 

_ "Hey, Izuku…" _ Aries, the angel that she is, immediately distracted him from his spiralling thoughts and grabbing his attention. 

_ "You know how to expel power from yourself, right?"  _ She asked, and Izuku only nodded, mildly curious where she was going with this and focusing on her mostly because his other options of focus didn't seem all that great.

_ "Can you try to do it in reverse for me? Here, put your hand on the demon," _ she instructed him and he returned his attention to the wolf below him, slowly dying because its feeble struggle had made its already severe wounds open up even further. He pitied it, really. Even though it was him that made those wounds, and it was also him that hadn't let it go to recover, and probably wasn't actually going to.

Nevertheless, he softly shook his head and put his demonic hand on the wolf, trying to feel the demonic energy outside of him as he had done when he first tried to use his demonic energy.

To his surprise, the wolf below him immediately stood out to his senses, but he couldn't feel it in any other new or special way. 

_ "That's fine, just… I guess try to pull that from it?"  _ Aries asked/directed, and Izuku suddenly became a lot less sure of what he was going to do. Killing demons was one thing. Absorbing ambient demonic energy in the air to make attacks was also one thing… but this... this was the same as cannibalising, since he was half-demon and—

_ "Oh for fuck's sake, Master, just do it!"  _ Artemisia growled, and he immediately grimaced and obeyed, her voice bringing back his more immediate concerns over long term ones.. 

Izuku couldn't describe how he knew it, but he somehow understood that the energy in the wolf wouldn't budge. That knowledge remained the same despite how many different types of pulling he imagined. 

_ "Maybe just kill it? Other demons do the same, after all,"  _ Artemis suggested. He mentally shrugged, far too beyond caring and curious at this point. 

"Probably would be mercy…" Iuzku murmured and ignored his angel's snorting. Raking off the wolf's head and watching it start to dissolve, he focused on pulling the energy again. To his pleasant surprise, the energy followed like a docile sheep. It was absorbed into his arm and immediately he felt better. Not as better as he would've liked, mind you. He was still incredibly hungry, but it seemed like he could think of other things with more ease now. 

_"I don't think this will ever completely satisfy your hunger. You're a human after all. And you still probably need to eat,"_ Ariesvia explained, and he felt Artemis nod her head. 

_"Yeah, we demons are the same, although we don't feel hunger like you seem to,"_ Artemis added and he sighed.

"Let's just hope it will make it survivable."

He stood up and went down the same side alley that the wolf had jumped out of. He had found that those wolves were rarely loners and usually had a few friends, friends that he could… What was this called again?

_ "Absorbing?"  _ Artemis offered, and he shrugged. Seemed good enough.

**At the same time** ... 

Berial was a demon of duty. From the moment that Balrog had taken over his realm and banished him, he had wandered Limbo, killing and helping alike. He wanted to get back on his rightful throne, left to him by his father. But he knew that just empty strength wouldn't be enough to take the throne, even though that was what Balrog had done. 

Berial was different from the demons that spawned in Limbo. He hadn't coalesced and come into a form out of nothingness, and he hadn't lived long enough for him to gain intelligence. 

He was actually a successful case of reproduction amongst demons. His father had told him how he achieved Berial’s creation with his mother through complex theories and lectures. He hadn't had any interest in those then, but he did know that he had been born with intelligence and a sense of self, which demons gained if they lived long enough, or if they took in enough demonic energy. 

In his younger years as a prince, he had thought that innately made him better than everyone. The notion had been arrogance of incredible heights, but nothing else. He had expected that everything would just keep happening his way, and his father hadn't disaggreed; in fact, his father obeyed his every wish, from not having training, to ruling the Burning Lands.

That last wish of his hadn't gone over so well with the other demons, and so they had revolted. A figure with incredible strength, but no sense of moral code, had shown up and spearheaded the revolt, killed his father, and then, just as a mocking mercy, exiled him instead of killing him. It had made Berial swear that he would get his revenge, and set him on the path to get stronger. 

And he had gotten his wish, marginally. He was stronger now, though he just didn't know how strong he was. He lacked an opponent to fight him. An opponent with a sense of code, a moral conduct that consisted more than just "survival." He wanted such an opponent because he needed the insight, he needed to see what made his father so great as to have him rule the fire hells for over a millennia. 

He had come across one demon that could have helped him on his journey, and now, that demon was busy in what may as well be another world. 

Instead, he had now found another demon. A half-demon, to be precise, that smelled similar to the first demon he had found that fit his criteria for the opponents he had searched for. He had also felt the strength of this opponent, and asking around with the smaller demons or the few collections of demons he had encountered had given him a name. 

Izuku Midoriya. 

Demons feared him. They were afraid of his presence. Even though he seemed to give off an angelic light at times and was able to use light magic, he had none of the feeling of an angel, no complete purity to him that marked him as one of those accursed beings. 

It made him easier to track, since his scent and his leftover energy was unique. However, Izuku seemed to somehow know he was being tracked and put the utmost effort in evading him, making Berial lose him a couple of times in the process. 

But all of that, all of that long rant, was fine. Because here it was, here was his chance. He had stalked Izuku in a diminished form and watched him slaughter demons in front of him and absorb their energy, looking a little better each time. Berial thought of this as Izuku gathered energy and he smiled. Because finally, finally they would have the battle they needed to have. Berial would come to know what it meant to have strength for a reason instead of empty power. 

He allowed his form to return to its bigger size and lunged at the boy, who leapt out of the way of his zweihander, a fiery sword made out of lava and, surprise surprise, fire. He readied his sword for a fight and bellowed at his opponent. 

"IZUKU MIDORIYA! YOU WILL FIGHT ME TODAY!" He charged with his bellow, unheeding of the stupefied Izuku. He slashed at his opponent as soon as he landed and a wave of fire followed it, causing Izuku to jump over it and aim his arm-cannon at him. Berial simply stood in place and let the shots impact against his sword with a grin. 

"SIMPLE ATTACKS WILL NOT WORK. YOU NEED TO FIGHT ME AT FULL STRENGTH!" he bellowed again and gathered fire in his hands before thrusting one downwards and causing torrents of fire exploded around them, forming a sort of arena.

"Wha—why are we fighting, dammit!" Izuku, in contrast to Berial’s excitement, simply seemed to be bewildered and more than a little annoyed. 

"We will fight, and I shall learn what true strength is! What true willpower is! What makes them strong!" Berial shouted again. He could not understand the human’s reluctance and almost wanted to express his curiosity over Izuku's twitching eyebrow and annoyed expression. 

"All right, I guess we are doing this now," Izuku growled. Berial smirked. A battle, a battle for the ages, and one of legends.

This time, Izuku made the first move, dashing towards him with a determined glare on his face. Berial readied his sword to swipe at the boy, but Izuku derailed those plans by jumping and making a tossing motion, conjuring a scythe mid-throw. Berial leapt back from it and blocked the following bolts of light. 

He jumped at Izuku, intending to body slam him into the ground, Izuku simply rolled under the attack and under Berial, but was pushed away by the demon flaring up his fires. Izuku bounced off the ground from the force of the flare and blocked a slash from Berial's sword with his demonic arm by timing his turn just right. 

The force of the slash sent Izuku towards the flames and he only managed to stop by stabbing his scythe into the ground, allowing the concrete below to arrest his momentum.

Izuku glared up at Berial while charging at him, his arms kept low to the ground as he ran. The boy blasted with his right arm just in time for the recoil to send him away from Berial’s slash and soaring head-first towards his chin. Berial took a deep breath right, but before he could unleash the blast of fire, Izuku changed directions and rammed himself feet-first into his chest.The demon’s breath exploded out of him in a fiery belch, and he instinctively lashed out at the human, who sprung away.

He rolled with his landing and smirked at Berial. He glared back and threw his sword at him. Izuku jumped over it with ease and held out his hand as if to summon his scythe again. Berial didn’t Izuku the time he needed, leaping after his sword and tackling him before the boy could sail away again. 

Izuku appeared to be dazed from the punch. Berial smirked as he re-summoned his sword and made to stab him. 

The half-demon leaned his body away, avoiding being impaled millimeters, and blasting the arm holding him by the waist. Berial chuckled as the blasts tickled his hide. Did the boy really think that such punitive attacks would hurt him?

Izuku paled as Berial growled and deeply inhaled. He immediately pointed his devil arm towards Berial's mouth and shouted, "OPEN IT AND I'LL BLAST YOUR MOUTH APART!"

Berial paused and glared at Izuku. Making his grip stronger, he was only marginally satisfied with the wince his enemy gave, who he noted hadn't yielded in aiming his arm-cannon, despite the pain his legs were in. Berial was about to commend Izuku and express his disappointment that their battle didn't turn out as he had guessed but Izuku beat him into speaking. 

"You know… getting strong doesn't need to have a reason. You can get strong  _ to _ have a reason," Izuku told himThe smile on his face which looked more like a grimace. Berial merely raised an eyebrow.

"I understand that I have told you the reason I wish to fight you, but was that supposed to somehow move me towards letting you go?" Berial wanted to sneer, but felt as if Izuku didn't deserve that. 

"Nope!" Izuku chirped brightly, which immediately put him on guard. "This is!" He then blasted at one of Berial’s eyes and agony filled his senses, causing him to hold his sword hand up his eye that burned as if it was smouldering. He almost wanted to chuckle, but his rage at being played so easily clouded every other emotion. 

"IZUKU MIDORIYA!" he roared. His agony, fury, and bloodlust echoed through his words and Limbo, causing the target of his roar to freeze up in fear as he charged the boy, summoning his sword again in his other hand, as his usual sword arm was busy nursing his injured eye. He slashed horizontally to bisect the boy, sure that he would meet his end if Berial's roar had frozen him in place. 

Izuku, however dodged at the last possible second and got a large gash in his chest instead, shouting in pain himself and swinging his scythe ineffectually towards him. Berial made no move to dodge and instead went to squash Izuku. Only years of battle instincts told him to bring his blade to the side to block what looked like a gigantic marble base nearly the size of his sword with thousands of scythe heads sticking out and pointing towards him. 

He heard Izuku angrily murmur, "This better work, Aries," before light and even further agony flooded his vision and body respectively. 

By the time he opened his eyes, the boy was gone.

Berial’s gaze swept across their battlefield, looking for any signs of his young rival. Seeing that he had actually evaded him, he couldn’t help but let out a deep, thundering laugh. He had been right; Izuku Midoryia truly  _ was _ a worthy opponent.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone so I know this chapter is a bit weird with the pacing we have so far and here is why: this chapter wasn't supposed to happen the real chapter 4 we finished and realized we didn't introduce Berial so we made this to make up for that the next chapter IS almost ready and should be posted in the next week or so. Sorry about any confusion


	5. Fight Through Limbo Pt.2: Abomination

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So THIS was supposed to be the original chapter 4 but we felt we left out some details after the chapter was finished.
> 
> Disclaimer: All religions portrayed in this work, though drawing elements from real-world religions and thus share some similarities, are fictional and belong solely to the world in which they are portrayed

**3 Months Later**

Izuku sighed as he ran his hand horizontally between the two pieces of leather he was sewing together, adding another stitch to the rest. 

He was currently making himself a new cloak out of the remains of some demons that hadn't completely turned into energy. He had learned how to make a needle from magic and how to sew by the sheer necessity of survival. His clothes hadn't been enough armor which had been made explicitly clear to him after he had decimated them against Artemis and further destroyed them against the horde after that. 

"Master? You're up?" came the soft questioning voice of his latest friend, Artemisia. She had been very helpful about logging his enemies in his notebooks, which were made from demon remains as well.

He only spared a nod to her and focused on his objective. It was a difficult task and he wasn't skilled enough to distract himself too much. 

_"Oh, you're up Izuku? You're pretty early, aren't you? It's only been a few hours since—"_ Ariesvia started to question him only for Artemisia to interrupt her.

"Master is strong enough to not stay down for long, right master?" Artemisia smiled at him with all the certainty of a child and he carefully suppressed all reactions except smiling back at her. 

"I think so. I'm—ow!" Izuku cursed in his head as a bead of blood appeared on his hand. He raised his hand to his lips and sucked on the wound while staring at his almost complete cape. The cape was made from the hides of anthropomorphic goat-like tribal demons that he had used as a distraction when escaping from Berial, the Minotaur-like fire demon that had been chasing them for three months now.

_"I still think you should rest a bit more,"_ Ariesvia fretted over him. 

Izuku took his finger out of his mouth and went back to work. "I'll be fine, Aries. It wasn't that bad." 

_"Izuku, you got slashed across the chest by a gigantic magma blade; why do you think it isn't 'that bad'!?"_ Ariesvia nearly screeched, making Izuku chuckle. 

"I'm half-demon, and you and I can heal stuff with our magic. Why would I be worried?" He returned to his work and made note of Artemisia getting up from the mess of hides and furs he used as a bedroll to read through his notebooks again. The demoness had sort of forced her way into sleeping, really sleeping, with him. He had been against it at first. It had felt weird because of her outfit and his natural reaction to being that close. But after he had refused, Artemis just got help from Ariesvia and manifested as he slept. These days, he couldn't find the will to protest whenever he woke up with her holding him. 

"So, master, what are we going to do today?" Artemis asked enthusiastically, and Izuku involuntarily smiled at her. 

"The same thing we do every day Artemis… try to take over the world!" He swept his free hand with an open palm, grinning like a loon, only to be disheartened at the blank look the demoness gave him.

"Wait, really? I thought you just wanted to go back home?" she said and Izuku could only sigh in dejection. He should've expected it, really.

"No, I do want to go back home. I'm just having fun," Izuku replied and then went about collecting his "equipment," which consisted of his several notebooks, materials which mostly consisted of demon remains, and his bedroll. Back before he and Aries got into space-expansion magic, he would've carried a rucksack with him. Now he just carried a bag, holding it by his side. This one wasn't gold colored, however; just black, like most other demons’ remains. He had jokingly called it his Bag of Holding.

_"'Bag of Holding' still doesn't make sense, Izuku. I mean, aren't bags already for holding things? Why add 'of holding'? It's redundant!"_ Ariesvia made her protest known again and Izuku could only respond with the fact that she wouldn't get it while chuckling and carefully placing his equipment through the especially-wide mouth of the spatially expanded pouch. 

_"Well why don't you try explaining it? You've explained other things to me before!"_ she complained and he got a mental image of her huffing in her aggravation that made Artemis laugh.

"Have you considered it's maybe too complicated? Like how I can't explain money to Artemis?" Izuku suggested and chuckled at her pout. 

"Well then. Come on Artemis, we're leaving, I don't want that flaming garbage to run after us like a madcow demanding a fight again." He held out his hand and pushed his will into the demoness, who gently smiled at him before bursting into purple and pink lights. The lights then gathered over Izuku's human arm, making the Devil Arm: Artemis.

He then sighed and started walking out of the cave he had chosen to sleep in. Oddly enough, there were fewer demons outside of the city. He’d assumed the opposite. 

_"Demons are only attracted to humans, master. Why would they be in a forest where there are no humans?"_

He nodded his head at Artemis' question while ignoring any alternate meanings, much to the amused laughter of the demon. 

_"But really, where's our destination now?"_ Ariesvia asked. 

"Out of this city. With that Minotaur rip-off trying to get me, we won't be able to function normally here,” Izuku answered distractedly while keeping a sharp lookout around him. 

_"You’ve functioned normally so far, master?"_ Artemis asked him with a giggle and Ariesvia joined a second later, cutting off Izuku's reply.

_"I dread the day when something becomes not normal for you, Izuku."_

Izuku glared in front of him on the virtue of having no targets. He then sighed, amused and exasperated. "What is this? Bully Izuku day, huh?" He mock-lamented as he heard the snickers and cackles echo in his mind.

_"To be fair, yesterday was Bully Ariesvia day. So this is only my revenge, Izuku,"_ the angel informed him promptly, and Izuku narrowed his eyes, again at no-one, before responding. 

"Aren't angels supposed to not be vengeful at all?" 

_"What? That's ridiculous! We have an angel of vengeance on the secondary council, just below my father's council; what makes you think we wouldn't be vengeful?"_ Ariesvia questioned and Izuku grimaced. Just another little tidbit that was a lie on the "angel lore" that various churches around the world kept referring to like a holy book. Ariesvia tended to get into rants about humans not understanding them when she heard about these. So he kept his mouth shut. 

_"Maybe it's a fact in their 'angel lore' like the 'fact' that angels feed on prayers instead of energy,"_ Artemis stated.. 

Izuku felt like grimacing for real. He shook his head and proceeded to ignore the indignant gasp and long rant about how it is offensive for people to get things wrong about a species they don't see at all and that they shouldn't assume things. 

By the time the rant was done and Ariesvia had run out of steam, Izuku had arrived at a lone park and decided to take a rest. He summoned some water from his fingertips and let it fall onto his tongue, gulping down a few mouthfuls before closing his hand and ending the magic. He shared a small, happy feeling with Ariesvia over being able to magically conjure water that didn't dissipate after some time together, a task which no being, human, demon or angel had ever done before. 

_"Wait. So you're saying that the water you conjure is permanent and not just an attack like my water?"_ Artemis asked with a tilt of her head that had Izuku suppressing the urge to pet her. 

_"Well, yes. While both angels and demons are_ _capable of magic, though they have to train for decades to use it and even then they're limited to a certain point of complexity that grows as the demon or angel grows older. Izuku and I haven't felt such a limit yet,"_ Ariesvia explained smoothly and made Artemis giggle over just how teacher-like she was. Izuku would agree; he could totally imagine the angel in glasses and a ruler pointing at equations on a blackboard. She certainly would've, and had been, a better teacher than his actual teachers. 

Izuku took a deep breath and got up only to feel the demonic energy in the air activating and starting to shift forms. He cursed softly. Neither he nor his friends had managed to figure out why, but when the demonic energy activated like this it meant that—

"HWAAOH!" 

Izuku leapt forward, planting a hand and using it to turn himself around and crouched to face the silver blade which planted itself where he was just a few seconds ago. He followed the incredibly long handle of the blade and stared up at the demon. It had silver-colored stone armor across its feminine body and black feathered wings as well as black hair. 

"A Harpy…" Izuku felt like groaning as similar shrieks followed the first, surrounding him. "There's never just 'one’ of them."

_"Oh, goodie. Target practice,"_ Artemis cheered in a tone of pure malice that caused Izuku to grin threateningly as well. 

He made his opening by pointing the devil arm downwards and letting loose a blast of energy, using the recoil to blast himself into the air and spinning with his momentum to face the Harpy that was behind him. He held out his demon arm and formed one half of a spell. Ariesvia happily completed the rest, causing spectral chains to blast through the palm of his outstretched hand and latch onto the wings of the Harpy in front of him, who shrieked in what he assumed was indignation and violently flapped its wings. This created a storm of invisible wind blades which Izuku launched over with another blast of his devil arm and yanked the arm that had the chains back.

The Harpy kept shrieking even as the others of its kind continued assaulting Izuku with wind blades and their physical expandable blades. Izuku either jumped over them by blasting with his devil arm, went under by using the chained Harpy as a counterweight, or swung his captive to deflect the strikes. He slowly positioned himself into a position higher than all of the Harpies before swinging himself into a roll and causing his captive to crash into the ground. He deactivated the chains at that point and formed half of another spell, causing the angel within to laugh and complete the other half. He placed both his palms on his opposite shoulders and felt the spell charge within him, just as a new volley of attacks were sent at him. After his last upwards momentum faded and gravity started to take its hold, he smirked and lashed out with both of his hands, like a ninja throwing an assortment of weapons. 

The spell, which had almost reached a critical point within him, exploded as he swung his arms, the magic manifesting itself as great arcs of lightning raining down almost at the same time, causing a brief flash, screams, and then nothing. 

Izuku smiled as he fell. No fall would actually hurt him if he was careful enough, which gave him the excuse needed to savor the feeling of magic that passed through him. He couldn't describe it if asked, but it felt partly like the joy he got when he could talk about quirks for a few hours with someone of similar enthusiasm. It also felt like being incredibly light yet being comfortably heavy. He didn't think he could ever get used to it. 

A black blur in the edges of his vision caught his attention, and he used the chains spell to yank himself onto the roof of a building. He rolled with his landing and stood up, immediately turning around to seek out the black blur. 

_"Whoah, temples still exist in the world?"_ Artemis asked as soon as they saw it, and Izuku could immediately feel Ariesvia frown thoughtfully. 

_"They do, but not like that, at least in Japan, anyway. It looks like a pyramid temple. We should take a look,"_ she half explained and half demanded and Izuku just began running. One of the many skills he had been forced to be at least somewhat competent at had been free running, before options like blasting himself like Bakugo liked to do and grapple hooking via spell had come along and required more attention. So it was easy enough for him to hop, skip, and jump on and over rooftops to reach one of the apartments facing the temple.

It looked to be made of black bricks. There was no other color on the outside of the temple as far as Izuku could see. The demons, who Izuku expected would be around this place on the base of how unique it was, avoided the black archway that probably led into the entrance of the temple like holy water. The weirdest thing was that Izuku didn't remember seeing a temple like this in the Musutafu area, and he had nearly memorized the entirety of it. 

_"We could stand here and theorize, or go in and find out!"_ Artemisia broke into his thoughts, and he involuntarily chuckled. It had been six whole months since she joined them and he still wasn't used to her outbursts of impatience when they decided to sit and think about something too long for her tastes.

_"Aren't you considering whether or not there could be traps?"_ Aries tried to explain her reasoning, but Artemis only sent the image of her blowing a raspberry.

_"So? It's not like we can call someone else to do it for us. We either spring them or we disable them! Come on, it'll be fun!"_ she wheedled them and Izuku grinned and leapt down, blasting three of the weaker demons around the gate with energy and landing in a crouch. 

He looked up to the gate and didn't see anything special about it, except for the gate being black. It looked like any other big double-door with an arch on top of it. He walked forwards while looking around him and frowned to himself about how easy it seemed.

"HALT!"

Figures. 

He stared up and found the voice to be coming from the left statue just beside the gate. The statue looked like a blue armored man with two hands on a long sword stabbed into the ground with what looked like a tiny, orb-like face set into the top of the armor seemingly acting as a head to the headless armor. 

"NONE MAY PASS!" the statue boomed. 

"Really? Not even for a little peek?" Izuku tried to negotiate, but this time the right statue spoke. He noted that this one's "head" was similar to the first statue, but red instead of blue.

"What is a 'peek'? It sounds suspicious..." the right one trailed off. Izuku vaguely noted that it had a deeper voice than its counterpart.

"Well brother, you see, a 'peek' is when you glare at someone from the back of someone else." The left one bobbed its head sagely and Izuku stared at it in slight fascination and slight horror. It should be illegal to get that wrong! 

"Ah, I see… hold on brother, why would our guest want to glare at the gates? I thought glaring was to express hatred." The right statue asked and Izuku felt his mix of emotions increase a little more. 

"No, brother. It is to express interest, but annoyed that one was interested." 

_‘What even…’_

"I see, so our guest already knows what's inside and can get past, then? I had been hoping to fight." 

"Brother, this is not a 'guest' this is an intruder!" the left statue exclaimed and Izuku had had Enough™.

"All right, what the hell are you talking about?" he exclaimed and glared at both of them, even if it required him to move his eyes. 

The right statue made a confused face. "Why would you want to glare inside the temple, of course!" 

The left statue sighed exasperatedly. "Apologies, he has been like this since we were… assigned here." 

Izuku quirked an eyebrow. Finally, a piece of useful information from these two. "And who assigned you?" he questioned. 

"That is—" the left statue started only to be interrupted by its brother. 

"We shall not tell you until you defeat us!" The right statue boomed out a challenge. The left statue went through a few expressions before settling on surprised joy and bobbing its head, agreeing with its brother. 

Izuku wanted to sigh. There clearly was something else going on here, since the one brother had abruptly challenged him and changed the topic which had caused the… smarter of the brothers to become surprised, but also agree. 

Izuku turned around and walked a few steps until he was a good distance from the gate. "Fine then. Come on," he challenged and felt glee coming off both brothers as the 'heads' of the statues launched themselves off of the statues, revealing their true form in the shape of swords, scimitars specifically, in the process. Stabbing into the ground, the duo of swords shouted and the statues melted, becoming headless clay golems resembling overly muscled men with claws for feet. 

The two golems dashed towards the wide, serrated scimitars, the red golem picked up the red sword and the blue golem picked up the blue one. 

**"You have to defeat us if you wish to pass!"** both of them said. Izuku smiled, feeling Artemis' excitement and Ariesvia's interest.

"Bring it. Let's see how good of a guardians you really are," he challenged and watched as the golems rushed towards him in what could only be described as Naruto running. He dropped into a combat stance only to dodge back as the red golem jumped up with the intent to slam down on him, while the blue golem slashed its sword at him, creating buffeting winds that Izuku only got out of via blast-jumping again and dodging both attacks of the golems 

He sent his chains at the golem who just completed his jump and slammed into the ground. The chains pierced the flesh on the shoulder of its sword arm and Izuku pulled to get the golem to at least stumble but was surprised when, unlike the other demons, the muscles on that golem were not for show and it actually managed to pull him towards itself instead of the other way around. He cursed and held out the forearm of his gauntleted hand, whose wings produced a soft glow and started to emit a low hum. 

The golem readied itself to strike at Izuku, and the half-demon ducked his head a little bit more. The golem swung its blade and the blade seemingly bounced off of air when in fact they had bounced off of the "sound shield" Izuku made with Artemisia, which was just a fancy way of saying the devil arm used sound to make a weak shield to stop basic attacks. Izuku used the opening to slam into the gut of the golem, but was immediately forced off and back into dodging as the blue golem came at him with a series of stabs, clearly stalling to allow its brother to recover.

He grunted when he made to retaliate, but the chain he had used on the red golem stopped him from going further and one of the downward stabs of the blue golem turned into an upwards slash and struck a gash on his torso. Izuku cried out and retaliated with a blast of fire from his hands, which got both the golem and the half-demon backing out of their fight and Izuku to release the spell keeping the chains intact. 

Izuku bit back another curse when he saw the red golem cautiously walk up beside the blue golem. There wasn't time to attack them one by one; he knew that. He had guessed that from the start. 

He gathered his power and warned his angel before dashing towards his opponents again. This time, they leapt back and slashed their weapons through the air at the same time, both blades flared up with their respective elements of wind and fire. Izuku hopped over the resulting wave of fire, but growled at the intense heat that passed him. 

He rolled after he hit the ground and thrust out his right hand towards the golems. A hail of light arrows followed his gesture, which the demons decided to run under. Izuku then concentrated and slammed his demonic left hand into the ground. The entirety of Limbo shook against Izuku's will, but he managed to force it through his arm and caused an immediate chasm to open before the two running golems, who stabbed their scimitars to the ground to stop themselves from falling in.

Izuku smiled and leapt over the chasm, sending a wave of water with a swing of his left hand ahead of him. The blue golem swept forward with its sword and sliced the wave apart, serving as a shield for its brother, but also allowing Izuku to close in on them and claw at the blue golem with the intention of taking away its weapon. Unfortunately, the golem nimbly dodged his slash, allowing its brother behind it to thrust its blade at him. Izuku ducked and then swept sideways to dodge the blue brother’s upwards slash 

He dodged backward again and huffed. "You're good… that's bad." He got within range again, this time with scythe in hand, and he slashed at the blue golem's gut while the red golem twirled its weapon and jumped, its scimitar pointing to the ground. The blue golem leaned away from his slash meant to take off an arm and instead slashed at his head, which he ducked and rolled to the side just in time to avoid the pillar of fire that the red golem had caused. 

He kept his scythe low to the ground and dashed at the demons again, only to roll to the side as the red golem jumped over him to try and get him between it and its brother. 

"That's not gonna happen pal; I'm not dumb!" Izuku exclaimed, only for the swords to laugh.

**"You would be surprised to see just how many end up between us in battle,"** they said before rushing at him again. The blue one seemed faster this time as it made to slash him as it ran past. Izuku looked at the red golem and had no doubts it was waiting for him to dodge the attack to change its charge accordingly. He grinned and charged the blue one, scythe low to the ground. The minute hesitation in its run cost it as Izuku got in a free slash across its chest. He wanted to get another slash in, but had to jump when the red golem swiped at him 

Landing on the sword of the red golem, he sent a kick towards the blue one, only for it to cross its arms and block his attack. The red golem went to punch him, but he was ready. Izuku grabbed its arm and heave himself up onto it, aiming his gauntlet and firing quickly, causing both him and the red golem to be blasted away by the gauntlet’s power. Izuku rolled to a stop and grinned at the ripped clay and the blast mark on the red golem's back. It looked like he had done serious damage and, thankfully, it didn't regenerate. 

He considered what to do next. He didn't think he could keep getting close and blasting them. They'd probably be on the lookout for it now. 

"Hey, Aries… do you think we can make a sword like we make chains?" he asked, even though he didn't expect a positive answer. 

_"Not really. We only know chains because you made some for us to understand it. Even now, our understanding isn't perfect, so the chain isn't…"_

"Right… any idea what we should do now?"

He felt Ariesvia raise an eyebrow and heard her remark dryly, _"escape isn't an option, is it?"_ Izuku grinned sheepishly and desperately tried not to point out that the resulting huff was very cute.

_"Maybe try to make an impact on the ground like those two are doing, or try to use the Big Laser Attack again. Would that work, master?"_ Artemis asked and a plan immediately sprouted in Izuku's mind. 

"I could kiss you right now, Artemis," Izuku said and charged the brothers again, who seemed much more wary of him this time. He grinned and skidded to a halt before swinging his scythe through the air, extending it slowly but fast enough so that it would slash at the two brothers, who decided to imitate his earlier trick and jump-stop his swing. Izuku retracted it just as they were about to land on the blade and managed to slash and injure the golems’ legs. 

**"Impressive, human,"** they remarked and violently slashed in an X pattern. Their strikes connected, making a clanging sound and sending out a formidable sized firewave towards Izuku.

Izuku ran towards it and prepared one half of a spell, making sure its purpose was clear. He threw his human hand forward and chains sprouted from its palm, whipping through the fire, coiling around the still stuck together wrists of the golems. Izuku seized the chain and kept running towards the fire, the barrel of his devil arm collecting energy. He could feel both brothers struggling, trying to free themselves and he could even feel the heat of the Firewave as it approached. He waited until he was meters away from touching the fire and then he released all the energy the devil arm had built. It wasn't as big as it had been against the horde, but there was still enough energy in the air to create a sizable beam. 

He aimed it right in front of him, both to make a path through the fire and strike the golems’ weapon wrists, but these demons weren't the normal fodder demons. They heaved him forward, causing him to lose his balance and partially miss his attack. This also threw off the alignment of his gateway through the firewave and forced him to throw himself right to correct the course. 

He didn't completely make it and hissed at the pain as the fire swept over his left arm. He could only be thankful that his demonic arm was stronger and a lot more durable than his normal arm due to its nature. He took a moment to stare at his opponents and gritted his teeth at only having one arm taken out of the fight, which belonged to the red golem. He may have lightly cursed when the golem just switched grips, he had been hoping to reduce the number of his opponents. 

**"Give up, Human. You cannot win against the Firestorm!"** They taunted him. Despite one of them losing an arm, Izuku looked to be in a worse shape. With his constant tumbling and falling and with the recent Firewave having burnt off the sleeve of his left shoulder, he didn't really look good. Yet despite that, he felt like he was somehow having fun. He could hardly believe it himself, but sometime in the past year, the fighting had become his entertainment rather than just his survival. He grinned at the thought and dashed forward, preparing half a spell and summoning Osiris. Might as well go all in.

_"Uhm… Izuku, we can't really do that without…"_ Ariesvia hesitated, and Izuku only grinned self-confidently. 

_"It'll be fine! I can take it!"_ Artemisia smiled at them. 

Ariesvia simply huffed and began working on the other half of the spell. They hadn't cast anything like this before. It wasn't a basic element, so she would need to work at it for a bit. 

He swapped Osiris to his demonic arm and the blade immediately lost its glow and started slowly extending. Meanwhile, Izuku pointed his gauntlet behind him and blasted forward, grabbing the extending scythe with both hands and using the momentum of the blast to twirl himself in the air to swipe at the golems, who immediately backed off and slammed their blades into the ground, causing a wave of fire and wind to blaze towards him. 

He kept his grin and used up the rest of his leftwards momentum to land himself slightly to the left, dodging the vertical wave of fire and wind and whistled at the strength of the heat that at licked him as it passed. 

He swung again, but faster. The duo still managed to jump back. They didn't risk jumping over it again. Izuku didn't stop his swing; he kept going to complete a turn and then just as his extended scythe was about to slash at the golems again, he let go of it but not before infusing it with wind energy. Thankfully, Aries was a master of that element so she could do it while working on another spell. The wind energy caused it to start spinning rapidly while heading towards the brothers, who jumped up the outside wall of the temple and then towards him with the intention of slamming down on him. 

He grinned and held out his gauntlet. The wings folded back and he heard Artemis’s chuckle before he gathered the completed spell of the reinforced barrel of the devil arm. 

**"SORIYAH!"** the swords shouted just as they were about to land and Izuku fired his spell. A blizzard in the shape of a cone was expelled out of the reinforced barrel of the devil arm and both of the golems landed on their backs; however, only the red golem dissipated, the damage of a point-blank energy blast and a missing arm adding up to beyond its vitality. The other golem got up to take the red serrated scimitar and took a stance with the red scimitar held in a frontal grip while the blue scimitar was held in a reverse grip. 

**"Impressive feat, human. None have managed to defeat our golems so far. Your fight will only be tougher now!"** The golem charged at him and Izuku summoned his scythe and waited. 

The golem jumped the last of the distance between them and made to stab Izuku with its red scimitar Izuku leaned out of the way and twirled his scythe to smack down the outstretched arm and smack the golem’s shoulder. The swords grunted and the shoulder of the golem sizzled with the angelic energy at the end of the handle of the scythe, but neither party gave it any thought as the golem swung its blue scimitar to bisect him while preparing its red scimitar for an overhead swing. Izuku gritted his teeth and launched himself backwards, swinging his scythe towards the golem’s gut, which it avoided by dodging backwards. 

The golem placed the pommels of both swords against each other and the golden material that made up the handle and the frame of the pommels extended, meshing together and joining both weapons at their pommel. The golem then rapidly spun the new, single sword around, causing small circular outbursts of wind and fire

The golem twirled the connected weapons around before outstretching the arm that held the weapon towards Izuku in a clear challenge. He hadn't liked his chances at close combat, so he’d infused the scythe with angelic magic in the hope that it would at least numb an arm. Unfortunately, it had done nothing but make the swords grunt. 

He could just play keep away and keep blasting the golem with magic, but he doubted it wouldn't jump after him to send waves and waves of fire. That sort of attack was hard enough in video games; he didn't need a real life version.

_"So, what? Are we just gonna change in aga—oh. Nice plan, master."_ Artemis winked.

Ariesvia sighed. _"Not the safest path. But I suppose that wasn't a choice to begin with."_

"ROAAAR!" 

The heat around the area suddenly increased and Izuku cursed. He knew that roar. 

"IZUKU MIDORIYA! I KNOW YOU ARE HERE! SHOW YOURSELF!" Berial roared and Izuku grimaced. 

"Hey, uhh. Do you think we can delay this? I can't fight that thing and—whoa!" Izuku dodged the flaming double-edged stone sword and immediately looked back to see its owner, Berial, carrying an identical sword to the one he had thrown at Izuku. 

**"Who dares interrupt our fight?"** both the scimitars demanded, and Izuku startled at the fury he felt from the swords. 

Berial casually strolled into the scene and grunted at the scimitars. "Out of my way, pests. I have an opponent to fight." He then tried to shove them aside with one of his legs only for the golem to slice at it, causing the Minotaur to hiss at the unexpected pain and roar at the scimitars. "YOU _DARE?_ " 

**"Our fight is not done. This isn't your territory, Berial; it is ours,"** the swords said which caused Berial to slash at the golem, which immediately jumped on the Minotaur and sent a wave of fire by rotating the joined swords at its hand. 

Berial moved unreasonably fast for something that size in Izuku's opinion, lunging across the field to pick up his blade, outspeeding the wave of fire and then raising his gigantic stone-and-magma blade to block the wave. Izuku jumped over it and to the side, keeping both the golem and the Minotaur in his sights. 

Both Berial and the golem made to move but stopped when their eyes passed over Izuku staring at both of them, the same idea of suspicion towards the other two settled on the minds of the other fighters and a standoff began. 

For a while, nobody said or did anything. The demons that had gathered at the outer gates of the temple stared in confusion as the fighters of the suddenly three-way fight stood still, surveying the other two. 

_"Izuku, I think we can play on Berial's insistence to fight you to escape…"_ Ariesvia cautiously informed him of her thoughts and Izuku grimaced. He didn't like the fact that he would have to get closer to Berial, not because he hated the Minotaur or anything, but because he was too strong for Izuku to fight properly. 

He took a deep breath and steeled himself, tensing his body for an attack, which the other two demons saw and reacted by tensing themselves as well. Just as he was about to jump out at the golem to attract Berial's ire, the ground shook, sending him stumbling. A pained shriek sounded out from the temple and the blue sword gasped. 

"It… escaped…" it uttered and paid Berial's inquisitive stare no mind, continuing to stare at the temple. 

A hole had been blown in the temple’s roof by an unseen force, causing bricks to rain down in fragments, but no one’s attention was on that. Their attention was on the moving shadows slowly crawling out of the hole on the top of the temple. 

Izuku could hardly think of a word about the black, coarse, slimy matter slowly pushing out of the temple, making a grinding sound against the remaining bricks. He stared as hard as he could, straining his eyes to make out anything about the matter. He wanted to think of it as a tentacle, but it wasn't like a tentacle. It looked both solid and ghostly, moving shadows and still light.

Whatever it was, it climbed or crawled out of the temple. Sluggishly, slowly, it ascended. After the matter, or the creature—whatever it was—came out of the temple, it straightened itself, seemingly becoming aware of its surroundings before the shifting shadows stilled and Izuku felt a presence staring at him, coming right from the thing on the temple. 

**"What is** **_that?_ ** **"** the brothers growled, the blades seeming to shake. Izuku felt a sense of indignation, fear, and dread coming out of them. 

That shocked Izuku, but not as much as Berial's angry growling.

"An unknown. Never in all the years of my life have I seen something so wrong, so putrid… I do not know what it is..." Berial readied his sword and turned to the being across from them. He growled, exuding a sense of killing intent. "But it will be felled, here and now."

**"We shall join you! Now that it has broken free, we cannot allow it to escape!"** the swords exclaimed in unison and Izuku sighed, almost physically feeling the inquisitive pressure on him.

_"We can just… not touch that thing, you know?"_ Artemis informed them, sounding and seeming oddly subdued and hesitant.

_"It… I… I can't run away, not from… not from whatever that is… I can tolerate demons… somewhat… but I can't tolerate that. Izuku, you have to kill it!"_ Ariesvia exclaimed, voice shaking and audibly distraught. 

_"And we're going to kill it. If we go away now, Artemis, I don't think it will leave us alone…"_ Izuku mentally responded to them before exhaling harshly. "All right. It dies here!"

"Then follow my charge! Izuku Midoryia, attack from afar; you're the only one who can!" Berial shouted at them, ordering them with the ease of someone who has led many battles. 

**"We shall destroy you, abomination!"** The brothers shouted a challenge and followed Berial's charge. Izuku grimaced at taking orders from demons, but got over it quickly, blasting himself upwards and using his chains to grapple himself onto the bricks of the temple. 

The creature's attention turned to Izuku and his instincts screamed at him to dodge, but he kept forward, barely avoiding an intensely cold attack from a shape distorted by the shadows popping out of the ground he was on. 

_"What!? I didn't even sense that! Careful, Izuku. It looks like you're flying blind in one sense…"_ Ariesvia cautioned him and he bit back his frustration. It was always something when fighting demons. He could never get a plain, powerful demon. 

As he readied a shot from Artemis, Berial reached the main mass of the creature and stopped just a few meters short of it, stabbing his sword into the ground and exhaling a burst of gas. The creature only stared curiously at the gas before Berial twisted his sword and a gout of flame ignited it, causing an explosion that caused the creature to rear itself back. 

All of the previous combatant's bones vibrated and their heads felt like exploding, but they hadn't heard a scream. In fact, they had only heard noises of grinding and choking from the creature. As it leaned back towards Berial, the choking had increased before a feminine shriek pierced the air, followed by the whistling of several arrows and a few flashes of light on the creature. 

"What the fuck? It's immune to light!? No demon is anything but vulnerable to light!" Izuku exclaimed, his hands holding a bow made of pure light with a trio of arrows from the same material knocked. This had been Izuku's plan to defeat the remaining golem before Berial disturbed their battle.

The creature seemed to shift its attention to him. Despite the fact that it hadn't moved, Izuku's instincts screamed again, but he was too slow to dismiss his new technique and another distorted shape pierced him in the demonic shoulder, which caused the surrounding area of the wound to immediately freeze over. Izuku shook off the fact that something had actually wounded his demonic arm and hastily summoned Osiris, twirling it in his human hand expertly to deflect the follow up black shapes.

**"Begone!"** A wave of fire passed over him and Izuku only found relief from his frozen wound instead of pain from the fire. The shapes receded into the ground, Izuku grunted as he moved his shoulder and realized he needed to heal the hole torn into it. He sheepishly formed half a spell and when his angel responded, started healing his shoulder. 

Meanwhile, Berial shouted a challenge and swung his great blade, making an attack to keep the enemy busy in order to allow Izuku to heal. He caused a wave of fire to burst forth from his slash and strike what seemed to be the main mass. The wave of fire disappeared into the void of the creature just as easily as the light arrows had, and Izuku wanted to scream his frustration. 

All they had were fire, wind, and light. Sure, Izuku and Ariesvia could try using magic, but they didn't have anything that could defeat that and it wasn't a guarantee it wouldn't absorb it like it had the other two elements. 

"This suddenly looks a lot more dire…" Berial ground out as it leapt backwards from another cold shape. "Our main attack force is injured, and our vanguard is useless."

Izuku felt like the Minotaur demon was making a few assumptions there, but he didn't feel like interrupting his healing to retort.

He felt the attention of the creature again and shouted "dodge!" before throwing himself to the left. Berial made a hop to the right and the golem ducked into a roll forward, all of them avoiding a black orb with a… mouth? Izuku stared at it in a strange, horrified fascination. It looked like an orb with the same, seemingly three dimensional moving shadows the main mass of the creature had, but it seemed somewhat identifiable as an orb with a mouth of sharp, misshapen teeth. It looked horrifying. 

Berial swung his sword at it and the creature somehow turned itself around and bit the sword, its teeth going through the stone and the magma and stopping the swing. Berial tried to take out his sword a few times but gave it up and leapt back as the creature ate enough of the blade to make it qualify as a shortsword. 

Izuku could only stare at it with wide eyes. That blade had sent him flying like a ragdoll and Berial hadn't even struck him seriously. This creature had just eaten through it like it was nothing. He took an instinctual step back before forcing himself forward, dodging another surfacing orb. He then blasted the ground in front of him to hopefully damage them and gain some distance. 

The brothers could only back off, following Izuku's prerogative. They didn't seem to be able to affect whatever this creature was. 

Izuku, on the other hand, was doing his very best to keep his fear from consuming him. He had seen many things in his year in Limbo, and he had come across illusionist demons, knight demons, invincible in some condition type of demons, you name it. But never something like this. 

They'd tried arrows, light, fire waves—nothing seemed to work. Izuku got the sense that, beyond all the disgust and revulsion the creature seemed to exude like a strange sort of putrid perfume, the creature was paying them only the barest of attention, swatting at them idly. Nothing came to mind that would work in a sure-shot way to take it and he felt helpless for the first time in a long while. 

_"I… we can kill it! I know we can! We'll find something Izuku, just hold on!"_ Ariesvia sent out her support and her warm feelings. Neither of the trio in Izuku's soul would comment about the desperation and wishing tones that laid beneath the self-assured way that she spoke.

He grinned, regardless of his internal doubts. "Thanks Arie, we'll take this thing down." 

"If you are quite done with your internal chatter, we need a tactic. Much as it shames me, I do not have one," Berial growled, staring down the creature evenly.

"You expect me to have an idea? It's basically invincible!" Izuku protested.

**"Nothing is completely invulnerable. It has to have a weakness, one we do not know of yet…"** the brothers growled as their golem approached. Izuku only felt less assured when he heard the same tones he heard from his angel. 

"I hope so… I don't think I can allow myself to let it escape, not that it looks like it's going to…" he frowned in frustration as he stared at the unmoving, yet writhing mass of black. Just looking at it made him want to puke and kill it and run away and never look back at the same time. It just felt completely wrong, like it shouldn't be on any plane of existence, let alone this one! 

"Maybe we can use that insistence to stay, somehow?" Berial suggested while not moving an inch and keeping his stare. 

"How? I can't throw that many spells before both Arie and I are mentally exhausted…" Izuku lamented that they had limits beyond just their energies. Casting spells took concentration and mental stamina, something they didn't have in great amounts right now.

**"Regardless, that… creature… needs to be vanquished—"**

The creature in question interrupted by convulsing its entire body and seemingly starting to move.

They could only watch in muted horror as the entire creature seemingly opened up, splitting itself into two pieces right in the middle and revealing a set of endless teeth with some of them sticking out among the rest like towers on a sea. It kept opening and revealing more teeth until it started floating, becoming a completely flat mass. And it stopped there.

Izuku and the demons watched in complete silence as the creature hung in the air, the shadows writhing as if in intense pain, or some depraved form of pleasure. The same "scream," that vibrated his very bones followed, and had they been in any less shock, they would have doubled over and missed the creature swiftly lowering itself, closing up like a gigantic clam on the temple it had sat on and the dirt under and swallowing it

"What… wha—" Izuku could only stare open mouthed, paying no heed to the mental quivering of both the angel and the demon in his mind. 

**"How… how disgusting…"** the blades remarked. Sure they had seen some demons eat buildings, they had seen some creatures that were as big as that, and they had seen both at the same time. But never, never in all their life had they seen a creature _Eat_ demonic energy—absorb it, sure, but to eat it? Never. That didn't happen. It wasn't something physically that could be consumed like flesh or steel, it was energy!

"... I… may have an idea." Izuku reluctantly stated as he watched the choking noises the creature made followed by it gagging wildly and throwing its upper mass around as if flailing. This, strangely, caused Izuku to slowly nod. 

**"Well? What is it?"**. 

"It's vulnerable inside itself. We need… we need to attack inside it… somehow," Izuku stated while grimacing. 

Berial scoffed. "That should be no problem, we have a sacrificable unit with us—"

**"We will not be sacrifices for you! Even if we are allies now—"**

"Your damned golem! I meant your damned golem! I intend to sacrifice that!" Berial roared back, causing the sword brothers to fall silent. Izuku felt that there was history there; Berial shouldn't really be that mad because the swords had a body and the swords really shouldn't be that defensive… then again, they were demons, so it could have just been about their brief argument over him. And didn't that sou—

_"Stop distracting yourself, master."_ Artemis shot down his building thoughts and Izuku grimaced, sending a mental apology, which the demon waved off. 

"Did you have a real plan besides sending someone to die just so we can deal damage, Izuku?" Berial asked and Izuku's grimace repeated itself. 

"I do… but nobody is going to like it…" 

He hedged and heard Berial scoff and bitterly mutter, "Isn't that the way of life…".

"Casting spells with Ariesvia takes up mental stamina. If it weren't for that, we would've already been out of Limbo a long time ago… but while casting spells is complicated… failing to cast one the right way isn't…" he took a deep breath and ignored the deep shock, indignation, and worry that came from his angel. "...And if a spell is failed, especially a space-time spell, the results tend to be bad… very bad… 'potentially destroying that thing’ levels of bad…"

"A chance," Berial scoffed again. It seemed disbelieving this time, however. "We are relying on mere luck…" 

Izuku wanted to lash out and ask if he had a better idea but the deep, almost worried sigh the Minatour demon heaved made him stop. 

"We have no choice, have we? Dammit, I better not be sacrificing my final test for this!" Berial growled and looked at Izuku. "Now, how are you getting in?" 

Izuku wanted to crack a joke and say "Through its mouth" but didn't; stress was visible on all of them after all, and he knew better than joking to make it lighter. 

"I'll have to carry the blades. There's really no other way to save them after the golem makes a good enough distraction and is probably eaten along with me after it makes one. We don't know what happens in the creature, but we should be able to fail a spell and kill it, and you two should be safe as we do it if you're with me…" Izuku narrowed his eyes in thought, more so talking to himself than the other two in the process, never once thinking about the fact that his allies were demons and he could just as easily leave them to die.

Berial stared at Izuku with something akin to respect before he nodded. "No other choice, are you with us, Agni, Rudra?" 

Izuku noted the names of the brothers in his head as they scoffed. 

**"It looks to be our only choice"**

"All right… so, Berial. You need to rush it. Let's hope it makes more of those cold things, so it gives me the speed I need to keep up with the golem’s charge. After the golem reaches the creature, we need it to act as if it’s going into melee. It would most likely open the creature’s mouth, and I can grapple into it that way… I hope…" Izuku gulped, giving his best efforts at stamping down his trepidation.

**"It gives us little faith. And it's much reliant on luck… but we have no choice."** The golem readied itself in a running position. 

"Taking orders from a half-demon… how desperate are the times…" Berial muttered and leapt forward without further words. The golem started running. Izuku sighed deeply and coordinated with a very anxious Ariesvia to perform their chain spells and follow along the veritable forest of cold, indistinguishable shapes trying to catch Berial off guard as he charged the creature. The golem was going almost completely unnoticed except for some worm-like constructs that were detaching from the black mass, trying to attack it. 

Izuku took himself through the forest of shapes. His aiming was mostly based on guesswork and imagination because the shapes weren't clear and kept changing as he stared at them. Taking any kind of calculation gave him a searing headache. 

He noticed, as he cleared the final swing and went past the charging Minotaur, that the presence he had felt during their entire strategy meeting was no longer watching him, despite the fact that he was almost right in front of the creature. He had little time to note it as the swords made a warcry to signal the rush of their golem. Berial held out a hand and magma and fire collected on it to create a new sword, which he threw into the air, allowing Izuku another swing through the air to make up for the miscalculated time and almost be right on top of the golem as the creature opened a section of itself as a new, horizontal mouth, as opposing as its previous vertical one, opened to swallow the golem whole. The charging golem extended a hand towards Izuku. 

"Please let this work…" Izuku prayed and launched his final chain spell and pulled himself towards the golem. He tucked himself midair and just as the golem and he were on the miniature sea of teeth, he heaved the chain in the opposite direction, forcing the golem to be launched out of the mouth just as it closed.

He felt violently ill as soon as it closed. He felt like he was spinning, yet being utterly still at the same time, causing him immense motion sickness, not that it seemed to matter because he didn't seem to be feeling his mouth, or even any other part of his body. All he seemed to feel was a strange type of pain. Like a heart pain, but it felt ethereal, like something he hadn't known he had all this time. He felt its existence was hurting for the first time since it was made. He didn't have the words for the pain, nor did he have any words for the motion he felt some abstract self go through. 

_"...ter! Ma—"_ a voice sounded, but then it was cut off by the thousands of other screaming voices that seemed to be aware that he had become aware of them and increased their volume. He had no arms to speak of to cover his inexistent ears as he was assaulted by demands, pleas, begging, angry shouts and tender words. It was confusing for him, but all his silence seemed to do was make them louder, like they felt the need to be heard specifically. And the more they spoke, the less he could think. He wasn't here before; all of this had felt new. 

But where was he before? 

A cold chill followed that thought and just like the voices, as soon as he felt it, he started feeling immense cold, as if he was on the arctic or was caught by…

Caught by? What could he have been caught by that was so cold? He didn't remember, and he felt that he should. He wanted to remember, and as he strained, he kept noticing more and more things he had forgotten. Why was he here, where was this place? Who was he anyway? What was he doing before he was caught… caught? What was he caught in? He didn't remember the answer to any of these questions and that only made him feel more scared. 

An errant thought passed through his mind. 

"Is this death?" he asked aloud without a voice, and suddenly, everything was clear, his memories, the voices, the environment around him. He was Izuku Midoriya, the half-demon who had been trapped in Limbo a year ago and had been searching for an exit ever since. He had fought against a creature out of this world, out of any world. Something that had no right to exist, and failed. 

So, he seemingly was stuck here. Wherever "here" was.… He turned his attention to the voices. Just as they settled down, he came face to… non-existent face with many, many people looking at him in pity. Some of them growled and cursed, some of them glared at him as if reproaching him for some failure, but all of them stared at him with pity. 

He opened his mouth to talk, but the old man he was looking at suddenly sharpened his gaze, like talking was going to be a mistake. Izuku scrunched his eyebrows in confusion. The old man only shook his head, eyes still focused on him. The man then slowly raised a hand to point a finger at him and made it spin, indicating him to turn around. He decided to follow, and turned around. Only to come face to face with a gate. It looked to be black, with moving shadows… it was similar to the creature. Faint noises were coming from the gate and he instinctively leaned in to listen. 

_"Master! Don't abandon us master!_ " Artemis cried, her voice strained as if in intense pain. The only other voice he heard was a soft sobbing. All of his instincts commanded him to bust through the gate, through it to the mouth of that creature. To pain… he hesitated, and cringed as the voices started up again. They were disapproving this time. Agitated. It dawned on him that these people were dead, and they had watched him die… It somehow gave him determination to go back and face it. As he turned around and stared at the figures, they stared back expectantly, as if telling him "What? Go on." He smiled and bowed; he hadn't forgotten all of his manners, after all, and he was sure that not allowing you to die at least required a bow in gratitude. He took a deep breath and jumped into the gate. A quick feeling of being squeezed into a straw later…

_"Master? Is that you? Oh thank fuck! I was so worried when your soul went—"_ Artemisia started to babble and Izuku could only grin wryly. 

"Artemisia? Now's really not the time…" He gritted out. He may have been out of whatever sort of afterlife that was, but he still felt like he was being compressed and expanded infinitely at the same time. 

"Arie? Arie I really need your help here!" Izuku tried to talk to the sobbing angel, but it didn't seem like she heard him.

_"Uhm, she's kind of shut down, Master. Your soul's absence hit her harder, I think…"_ Artemis trailed off and Izuku shelved the question of where the demon and the angel had been if he had traveled with his soul for later. For now, he needed to try something Ariesvia had been trying to painstakingly teach him for the last three months. 

Meditation. 

In the middle of a creature's belly. 

What was his life?

He shoved those thoughts away and focused on his breathing, doing his damnedest to ignore the contracting and expanding sensations occuring at the same time, the loud and grieving sobs of the angel he was trying to confront, or the incredibly sharp sea of teeth he was on. 

He wasn't exactly doing a good job, but he was stubborn and desperate enough to try over and over and over again. Eventually, he got so lost in his desperation that that one emotion quieted everything else. Nothing mattered except getting to his goal which was finding Ariesvia and comforting her enough for them to actually fail a spell. God, he had never wanted to fail something as bad as he did now.

With that thought, he found himself on an island. It wasn’t remarkable; just an average island like any other you would find in warmer, more tropical places. Only the cries he had heard moments ago, echoing through the forest in a real voice give Izuku the reassurance that this was his mindscape and he really was meditating inside of a monster.

He carefully approached the forest, following the sobbing and almost physically feeling the pain in his heart. He came across a girl in a form-fitting chest plate that left almost nothing about her torso to the imagination and black leather pants. The girl was crying. Thin, black silk gloves block him from seeing her face, but he did see that she had short, almost metallic, black hair that barely reached her neck, except for the twin braids going from her bangs to her chest. He takes the image in while approaching slowly, fearing any fast moves will cause the girl in front of him to react. 

"Arie… Ariesvia… can you hear me?" Izuku asked softly as he grasped her hands. the girl immediately froze up. A second passed and her hands immediately and blindly searched for his hands and latched onto them in a vice-grip. He felt his hands twing in pain, but gave it no thought. "Here I am, Aries. I haven't died…" he said in a gentle, relieved voice. As her loud sobs slowly died down, her hands started to shake, as if she feared to look up. 

He sighed softly and crouched down, catching her unique eyes. He took a moment to get a look at them as they widened in recognition that he was alive; they're golden, with a black iris in the middle. What made them unique was the "shards" of lighter gold forming around the edges of the sclera, as if there had been a break in a window. 

His moment of inspection was broken as the angel let out a gasp and crouched (fell) in front of him. Her hands abandoned his and immediately roamed about his face, feeling his features, etching them into her memory and confirming for herself that he was alive. Izuku, for his part, just crouched there and allowed her to handle him as she wished. He was more than familiar with the mindstate she was showing herself to be in due to his quirkless nature combined with a mother who often worried way too much about him. 

He made a note about how he hadn't thought about being quirkless ever since he fell into Limbo, when he had thought about it everyday before falling, (and watched as a notebook with legs manifested behind trees and ran deeper into the forest… trippy.)

"You're alive!" Ariesvia squeaked, and Izuku was floored with how beautiful her voice was. The sheer relief that flooded it only served to make it better in his ears. "Thank the council! I thought—I-I thought that we lost your soul when Artemis and I were cast out of here and into the mind. I was so scared, Izuku!" she exclaimed, and he felt her hug him before he saw it happen, and their already precarious balance failed as she lunged to hug him, making them fall onto the dirt below. 

Despite the slight discomfort, Izuku only smiled. This was Ariesvia, quite literally his guardian angel and partner in magic-casting crimes. And also his first physical friend… kind of. And as much as he would love to talk to her, they did kind of have a job to do. 

"Right." Ariesvia nodded at him seriously before climbing to her feet and pulling him up. He frowned in surprise; he hadn't even told her—

"We're in your mindscape, Izuku," she replied to his thoughts with an amused voice and he could only facepalm while chuckling lamely. 

"Go on. You can come back later, we need to… fail this spell, ugh. I get why we have to, but it's going to be annoying to think about…" she groused, making him chuckle. 

"I'll see you later," he said before opening his eyes into the darkness of the belly of the creature. He channeled half of their most explosive spell, missing some points on purpose and deliberately not thinking about how he hadn't been digested yet. 

_"Here goes…"_ he heard Ariesvia's reluctant voice and felt her channeling the other half of his spell, intentionally wrong again. Frankly, he was amazed they managed to muster up any spell, let alone their most powerful, after all that happened to both of them. 

_"Master? Stop talking,"_ Artemis commanded him.

He nodded before channelling the spell onto his hands, holding the dangerously white energy between them. 

"Let this work…" He thrust out his hands and let the spell fly.

Whiteness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I know what some of you are thinking..."When is Izuku getting back?" and I cannot confirm nor deny he may get home next chapter. :p  
> Anyway I hope you all are still enjoying the story and will come back for the next chapter of A&D!!!!
> 
> P.S. Yes this chapter is important to the future of the plot.


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